Siblings
by Ananke Adrasteia
Summary: Two Bhaalspawn siblings have a chat in Irenicus' dungeon. And then... yup. They leave it and play the game, what else?
1. I: The Opening, 1

_Short introduction:_

_Hello to everyone! Siblings is a walkthrough of Baldur's Gate 2, but I'm trying to make it as independent a story as possible. This means that, theoretically, you should be able to read it without ever playing the game. Or without having played the game in the past few years. All the relevant information about the world and its characters should be contained in the story. Just like in a normal book - and, just like in a normal book, the information about how the world works will, hopefully, flow in gradually._

_That said... if, by chance, you decide to step by and read it, but decide that I did a bad job-- Mightn't you, please, at least send me a PM telling where / why? I'll be very happy and extremely grateful. In fact, I'll be grateful for any and all reviews and comments you send._

_So now, kindly... Enjoy!_

**

* * *

****Siblings**

**Part I: The Opening**

**1**

The man shook the girl's prone body.

"Wake up!"

"Wha— What?" the girl asked drowsily.

"Wake up, little sister, or I change my mind and kill you, after all," said the man, sounding not at all amused.

The threat had the desired effect; the girl opened her eyes at last. She looked at the man, and her eyes grew wide with terror.

"_You_!"

"Yes. I. Now, drink this," the man said, passing a blue-tinted bottle to the girl. Seeing that she hesitated to take it, he said, again with more than a little warning in his voice, "A minute ago, you were lying unconscious on the floor. If I wanted you dead, you would be. It is a healing potion."

The girl blinked, but took the bottle and drank from it. It _was_ a healing potion: she could feel it spread across her body, bringing warmth to the tired members, healing cuts and bruises; lending a modicum of clarity to her mind.

"Are you lucid?" the man demanded, and the girl nodded. "Can you stand?" he demanded again, and she felt in her limbs for the answer to the question.

"Yes?" she hazarded at last.

"Good," the man replied curtly. "Do so." He made no movement to help her up.

The girl followed the order, standing uneasily on shaking legs. She was tired, dehydrated and still hurting from the many wounds that the potion had only half-healed; but she simply had to stand up, she felt, she simply had to prove that she could stand up and walk out of that cage.

The man watched her; at last, apparently satisfied with the display, he said, "Follow me."

As before, there was simply no possibility of refusal; and the girl found herself following the man into another, much better lit room. The light almost blinded her for a moment; she felt tears flow into her eyes in an ineffective attempt to protect them.

When she recovered, she saw that the man stopped by a chest standing in the corner of the room. "It is locked. Open it."

The girl blinked again in incomprehension. "What?"

The man gave her a cold look. "Have the wizard's tender ministrations left you feebleminded, little sister? My spies told me that you were the thief of our late sibling's company. There is a lock here; consider it an opportunity to exercise your skill."

"Why—?" the girl searched frantically her mind for words; it was so hard—so very, very hard—to pull herself together—

She tried again, "How—?"

And again, "What—?"

The man was definitely not amused by her confusion. "The lock," he repeated.

Resignedly, she obeyed.

---

Working on the lock was, curiously, what in the end let her regain command of her senses: her fingers, following schemes imprinted in her mind through countless repetitions, manipulated the shard of metal by themselves, thus allowing her a moment to think.

Behind her, various clinks and clanks signified that _he_—Imoen could not force herself to think of him in any other way right now—did not remain idle while she was occupying herself with opening the lock on the chest. Indeed, when she turned around, he was already finishing putting on several scraps of metal which together looked like a provisional plate mail. A suit of leather armour was laid out on the table in the middle of the room.

"Finished," she announced.

He raised his head. "And inside?"

She reached inside and reported, "Healing potions and knives… One of the daggers is enchanted, a bit."

He nodded thoughtfully; if he were disappointed with the meagre loot, she could not tell. "Then consider it yours, sister. Now—"

He did not finish, because, unable to take it any longer, she exploded, "Why are you calling me that?! I'm no sister of yours!"

She could not decide whether she wanted to scream or to cry.

There was only cool contempt in the man's voice now. "If I had any choice to deny it, I would. But I do not: we are kin, you and I. Not that it will matter in the end, of course."

"No. You will kill me, like you killed Irene!"

The man's eyes did not leave hers. "Of course," he agreed easily. "That is the way of our kind. Put on your armour, little sister; we must move before the wizard returns."

Imoen looked at him with utter disbelief. "We?! How can you— How dare you—" She sputtered, and then, suddenly, burst out again, "How do you know, anyway?! How can you be sure? About me being— The same as you, I mean?! And what's going on here?! How come you're so sane all of a sudden?! Last time I checked, you were babbling on about godhood, and refusing Irene's offer, and killing—" She was going to cry any moment soon, she knew it.

The man did not move from his place. "Put on your armour," he repeated.

For a moment, she wondered if this wasn't some illusion conjured by the wizard, some illusion of freedom; if she wouldn't wake up any moment soon, only to discover herself still bound, in a cage, cut by knives, burnt by magic— The man who claimed to be her brother crossed the few steps which divided him from her, invading her personal space in the brusquest manner possible. She moved instinctively away from him; but she was too slow. He caught her chin in his palm, and forced her to look up; and up; and up, straight into those burning, golden eyes.

"Little sister," he said, and his deep voice suddenly reminded her all too well of an enraged predator's growl, "Our late sibling may have condoned or, indeed, encouraged, your antics. As you may yet have the chance to discover, I am of a less tolerant disposition. _Put on your armour._"

With one hand, he reached to the table behind himself, and retrieved the leather. Then, he put it in her unresisting hands.

And then, he backed off; but he did not stop watching her.

---

The callous dismissal of her questions—and, admittedly, the demonstration of the man's sheer physical power—served as a sobering experience. She started to put on the leather.

But— _He_ did not want her dead, for now, did he? He talked to her. And he gave her that potion. Which meant— What did the big, bad Sarevok want from her first? Of course.

"You know, big brother, if I'm to serve as your trap-detecting monkey, you might as well tell me something," she prodded, carefully.

The man's eyes narrowed slightly at the epithet; but he smiled, coldly. "I see that you have guessed my purpose for you at last, little sister."

Imoen shrugged, and tried again. "Well, it wasn't too hard, was it? I mean, come to think of it, we're in the middle of a place which must be full of traps, and you're nothing but a big man with a pointy stick. It's hard to use that on a trap. Or scare it."

That failed to achieve its intended effect; the man kept his cool. "A surprisingly accurate, if not entirely succinct, summary of our current circumstances, sister," he replied calmly. "Fortunately, I need not intimidate traps. Only the—what was that phrase, again?—Trap-detecting monkey?"

"What makes you think that I'm afraid of you?"

"You are," Sarevok Anchev replied simply, and they both knew that he was telling the truth.

"What makes you think that I will want to work with you?"

He considered this for a moment. "An interesting question. I suppose that I might break every single bone in your body, starting with those really small in your palm—but that would either render you unusable to me or force me to spend more healing potions, and those are currently in scarce supply. Besides," he eyed Imoen critically, "if the wizard treated you the same way he treated me—and I see no reason to believe that he did not—the intimidating value of mere physical pain must have decreased considerably in your case. This, however, leads me straight to the crux of the matter. The wizard. Much as it pains me, you fear him as much as you fear me. If not more."

"You want us to work together?"

"Oh, no. I merely believe that if we meet him and he is occupied with one of us, the other one may have a chance to escape. This works both ways, mind you," he added, clearly in response to Imoen's changed expression, "I am by no means saying that I will be necessarily the one who manages to escape, sister. Though I certainly intend to."

She grimaced. "Why do you keep insisting that I'm a—" She forced herself to say the word, "—a Bhaalspawn?"

The man gave her another frigid look. "How many of your people were still alive when the mist fell?"

Imoen started. "What?"

He sighed, and, in view of this almost human behaviour, Imoen started again. "I killed the half-elves, then one of the elves killed Tazok. Then, I killed our sister. This means that Angelo, Semaj and two of your elves should still have been alive when the mist fell."

Imoen furrowed her eyebrows: remembering the past was an unexpected pain. "Xan and Kivan, yes."

"The wizard," Sarevok continued in the same matter-of-fact voice, "killed Angelo and Semaj."

Imoen was suddenly glad that she had nothing in her stomach to vomit out: another memory occurred to her, of the wizard's cutting a body and showing her things, and of the body's screaming and screaming, and then, of the wizard's talking in a soothing voice and an unfamiliar tongue, and of another person's replying in the same tongue, and of the wizard's casting a spell, and of a sudden whiteness, a sudden, terrible whiteness—

Sarevok was still speaking, "This leaves you and the elves—"

"The elves are dead, too," Imoen cut in, abruptly.

"Ah. I was just about to comment on their absence. For, you see, this leaves you as the only other person interesting enough to keep alive, sister."

---

She digested the news for a moment. Eventually, she decided that, if it was at all true, it would have to wait until a better occasion, when she was more prepared—alcohol would come into play, she was sure of that, and in copious quantities. For now, there was a more pressing issue.

"So, there's a truce until we escape this place or meet the wizard, right?"

"Yes," Sarevok answered; then, pushed a bow towards her across the table. "Your favourite weapon, I was told."

Imoen took it, and started to check the string. "And then, if we manage to get away, you'll kill me anyway?"

"If we manage to escape, yes," he said, pushing the arrow-filled quiver down the bow's path. "We are siblings, after all."

The string was fine. "Can't say I like this idea much."

The golden eyes watched her curiously for a while; and then, at last, she heard, "I cannot say I do not understand your point, sister. Would you be less averse to the idea of cooperation if we simply parted upon leaving? If we are to meet again, we shall; there is a prophecy in action."

Now, it was Imoen's turn to stare for a moment. "You would do that?"

"Certainly," said the man, putting on a helm; Khalid's helm. "In any case, I have a wizard to destroy. He interfered with a familial issue; that is an unpardonable offence."

Against her better judgment, Imoen snorted.

"First, however, we need to leave," Sarevok concluded; and, indicating a dark corridor, he asked, "Shall we, little sister?"


	2. I: The Opening, 2

**Siblings**

**Part I: The Opening**

**2**

"I can't do it."

The short passage had led them from the armoury up a set of low stairs to the closed, cast-iron door. "I can't do it," she repeated, unable to force herself to look at the steel-clad man; what good was a trap-finder who could not open a lock? "See this? And this? These are magic wards. I don't have the tools—"

The inhuman eyes burning within the obscurity of Khalid's helm watched her babbling in silence.

"Fine," the Bhaalspawn growled out at last. "Follow, sister."

In his pursuit, Imoen returned to the armoury; from there, to the dank prison, with its cages, wrought of steel, barely large enough to let a body stand inside, and soiled with human refuse; she shuddered. The next corridor was ill-lit and familiar, and for that reason, horrid; she balked.

Then, she took one quick, angry look at the broad, armoured back disappearing within the darkness. She was a thief; she had been an adventuress; this— This was just another dungeon, like the ruins of the Firewine Bridge!

Hence, she followed; they entered the laboratory.

---

Only the sounds of footsteps and fighting broke the silence as they walked through the dungeon: the murderer, and, by his side, she; both lost. The stone corridors were cold, ill-lit, sinuous, and bare; cluttered with tables holding knives, hooks, other instruments of torture; cluttered further with further such implements hanging off the low ceiling. They twisted and turned, and returned, and doubled on themselves, leading the escapees now to another in a series of dead ends; now to another of those small, empty chambers upholstered with bloodstains and the lingering smell of rotten flesh; now to a storage room with defunct golems standing idle; now to another closed door; now to another mephit swarm—

Sarevok was a killing machine; and Imoen was no fool.

She watched the Bhaalspawn as he fought. There was no subtlety and no finesse in his moves; only the brutal, deadly efficiency of a man utterly assured of his own superiority. The first mephit which peeped out from the darkness of the labyrinth, he brushed off as if it were a fly; the off-hand gesture sent the beastling flying into a wall, where its spine broke with a sickening crunch. The swarm which followed scattered in fear upon the man's mere sighting; shortly, all those waspish, gossamer spirits of fire, and dust, and ice, and air, and salt, were dead, too: cut down, stabbed, but often simply clubbed to death with Sarevok's sword.

He could not even swing the blade properly in the narrow corridors, Imoen thought absently as she drew the string of her bow again; the majority of her thoughts occupied with pushing back the memories the sight of the butchery insisted on evoking: of Irene, and Jaheira, and Khalid, the half-elven wardens, felled down as easily, as utterly effortlessly, as the mephits were now felled, and to the sound of a blood-showered madman's laughter. This was no time for such memories. This was simply no time for them; instead, she must concentrate on escaping this place; and, if they managed to escape the place, on escaping this selfsame blade when Sarevok would decide to break his word.

And thus escaping, thinking, killing, scanning the walls and the floor and the ceiling of the dungeon for enemies and traps; ever in the silence which suited alike them both—she plodded through the carnage left in the wake of her self-declared brother's passing; until they met Aataqah.

---

Aataqah was a genie, a noble, a ten-foot-high djinn; and Aataqah would perhaps give them information in exchange for answering his question. Sarevok, not interested in the vague promises of succour, abandoned the conversation and the genie to Imoen.

Who listened to the genie's query; and then, replied thus, "Of course I push the button!"

And then, heard the deep, familiar, hated voice speak up, amused, from the far side of the round, crystal-lit cavern which Aataqah had made his home, "And I do not; which means, little sister, that you are now dead and I am alive." Evidently, though Sarevok had bowed out of the talking, he had not forsaken the listening.

Startled, Imoen looked at the man in betrayed disbelief; there was no telling, however, if he as much as noticed it; and certainly, if he did notice it, he took no notice of it; for the golden eyes within the helm's darkness remained as enigmatic as they had ever been.

The girl was about to demand the reason for the imposition when the genie laughed; and, in laughing, reminded them both of his presence.

"Well, well, what interesting choices! And to think that now, you will have to live with the consequences of these choices! But in return for your answers—your extremely interesting answers—this is my advice for you, Imoen: seek Rielev; he seeks ones such as you. As for you, Sarevok… No," he laughed again. "I cannot advise you! You did not agree to the game."

"I wonder what he meant," Imoen said to herself as the genie disappeared in the air which was his natural element; and then, to the man standing in the deep shadows of the room, "So, you wouldn't press the button, big brother?"

"It is the only correct choice," she heard in response, spoken offhandedly, as though she were no more deserving of Sarevok's attention than the mephit he had killed simply by brushing it off of him.

Angered by this utter disregard, Imoen pressed on. "How so?"

The terrible eyes focused on her, and she almost regretted her words. For a moment, Sarevok considered; and, in the end, said, "Is it not obvious, little sister? The outcome the game has for me is determined entirely by your choice. If you do not press the button, then, whatever I do, I die. If you do press the button, and so do I, then I die. The only way for me to live is if you press the button, and I do not. Therefore, the correct way to proceed is not to press the button; this gives a fifty-percent chance of survival, as opposed to no chance in the contrary case. The logic is irrefutable."

"In other words, the egoist wins!"

The man ignored her accusation; instead, he added, in an afterthought, insult to insult, "The door in front is closed. It has the same type of wards as the previous one you could not open, sister."

Then, without waiting for her reply, he went past her, and made for the exit from the room, again.

---

"So this is what he meant when he said that Rielev was searching for someone like me," Imoen said, looking at the body suspended in the gelatinous mass filling the large glass jar. The bright, harsh light here did it no favour; Rielev, or the other bodies. She had counted them when they had finally found and entered the chamber: twenty, set in two rows under the walls. The rest were, thankfully, already dead.

She had been in this room before. The wizard had shown her something— What had he shown her? She could not remember.

"Yes," her butcher of a would-be brother, his makeshift armour covered in dried mephit blood, replied meanwhile flatly, breaking the stream of her thought. "A killer. A murderer. Someone like you."

"I actually meant, a decent person," she snapped at him.

That earned her another prolonged, wintry look. "Do you still refuse to believe that you are kin, little sister?"

"No, Sarevok, I don't," she retorted, playfully, lying, confused, sincerely frightened for the first time, perhaps; and then, "But I'm surprised that you would insist on it."

"There is no use fighting the obvious," the man replied; then, suddenly amused again, added, "Well? Make your kill, sibling."

He clearly awaited her reaction; indeed, she felt as if she were being subjected to some cruel test; and resented it immediately. "I will not kill to make you happy, Sarevok," she declared loudly. "Neither you nor Daddy—"

"As you will," Sarevok replied, and again she could not even say if he was amused, or disappointed, or if he simply did not care; but Imoen was not yet finished.

"—but I will do it to make _him_ happy." She kneeled next to Rielev's jar, and searched in the darkness for the cells which, Rielev had told them, powered the contraption.

"And that is nothing less than I expected of you, sibling."

Imoen grimaced. She was about to reply when she realised that, all of a sudden, there was more space in the room: the man's silhouette was missing from the doorframe. Sarevok left her behind. Again.

A sudden, angry thought crossed her mind: She really must not let him get to her so easily!

---

Rielev, in life, had been the wizard's servant, the revenant had told them in his muddled, confused speech; the wizard's servant, and himself a minor sorcerer. And for his death; his suicide; his murder, perhaps—he had paid her, generously, in kind.

"This place is… a test. A glance. A possibility. The chronicles are the beginning," he had told her when she had asked him if he knew where they must go, "And the path follows: you must fall and you must rise; in between, you will find your way. That is all I know. All I can say. All I will say. I can see no further. The Master is there."

The advice was flimsy, and all they had; and so, as the Bhaalspawn now led, and she followed, after a few missteps and wrong turns, they found themselves in the library.

That, of all the places in the place, merited, barely, the name of a soul's own room. It was well-lit, whitewashed and sterile, populated not by mephits, but by high shelves full of tomes, old and new; there were several writing desks and another warded door which Imoen could not open here; and, scholarly, it reminded her, abstractly, of Candlekeep. For that, she was relieved, and grateful; she was discovering more and more gaps in her memory.

"The Helm and Cloak!" she had yelled out when she had remembered that at last; triumphantly, involuntarily, aloud, during that break when Sarevok had been trying to make a golem work and obey his orders.

"What?" the man had barked, turning to her: seven feet of steel-clad muscle and homicidal intent, its full attention fixed on her.

"The Helm and Cloak," she had repeated, more quietly, aware of the burning gaze focused on her, again. "It's where we found Khalid's helm… The one you're wearing," she had added; he, Khalid's killer; she had added further, angrily, in thought; "I don't know what it is. It sounds like the name of an inn, or something."

The man had stayed silent; then, unexpectedly, as if talking to a wayward child, had said, simply, "Yes. There is an inn called Helm and Cloak in Baldur's Gate, sister."

In Baldur's Gate, which he had almost managed to rule into a war— But the monastery of Candlekeep, where she had spent her childhood, in Irene's company and Winthrop's and Gorion's care, she remembered; and that was what the library had reminded her of. And Gorion, too, was dead, killed by Sarevok Anchev; and Winthrop might well be, because Sarevok Anchev had wanted to become a god and Winthrop had perhaps been in his way.

Gorion was not, and Irene was not, and Khalid was not, and Jaheira was not, and many other good people were not; but the murderer was, and now, he was watching her, because he had deluded himself that she was his sister.

"We must fall," the man was saying, now, without feeling; a spiral staircase took them down from the library into great heat and clouds of ash and rhythmic, beating noise and nauseating smell and the red light of the tongues of flames flickering on the stone walls; into some private hell of the wizard's making, constructed for some private demon.

Sister! Future target, in Sarevok-speak and other words. And that, without the slightest glimpse of proof; only conjecture—

The first soot-covered creature fell even before Sarevok reached it; Imoen's arrow embedded deep in one of its small, shifty eyes. She saw no reason to suppress the triumphant smirk which forced itself on her lips; Sarevok need not know how much of that badly-aimed, weakly-drawn shot ought to be really attributed to Tymora's pure luck.

The other dwarves, some ten of them, panicked as soon as they saw the Bhaalspawn; screeching, mephitlike, they scattered around; and so, it was dreadfully easy for Imoen and Sarevok to pick them off, coolly, one by one.

"Duergar," the girl said when they were finished, and eyeing the bodies. "Deep dwarves, from the Underdark— I read about them in Candlekeep while you were off murdering people, big brother."

"Even old monks are not without use," agreed he, in a tone she could only call gallingly neutral. "Search the chests, little sister. I will deal with the bodies."

---

The duergar had been the weapon-smiths; the creators of those very special knives which littered the passages; and they were in the forge. It was silent now, here, but for the Bhaalspawn's steps; but the heat and the smoke and the ash remained. She sweated heavily as she opened the chests, one by one, wildly; she felt the tattered shreds of what counted as her clothes cling to her body under her armour; she was thirsty, and her head hurt, and she wanted to sleep; but she could not sleep, of course. The place was a labyrinth, the directions muddled, they hadn't really moved far from their starting point, there was no exit and there was no telling when the wizard would return, discover the empty cages and start searching for his prisoners. Perhaps he already had. She must not sleep. And she was in _his_ company—

She moved away from a stove, felt cold, wiped her forehead with a sooty hand, and shuddered.

"We must fall," she intoned to herself, quietly, as she opened the next chest. There was very little inside that, too; and certainly nothing in the way of, for instance, an invisibility potion.

Then, she noticed it.

She picked it up, slowly.

---

He tore off the duergar leader's key from his neck, and looked at the transfixed girl. "Have you found something, little sister?"

When Imoen turned around to face him, she was holding in her hands a thin, silver, ash-covered necklace.

"It was Irene's," she said slowly. "It aided her in remembering spells—"

"Good," he replied. "Put it in here," he added, indicating a small bag which he had found somewhere on the way, and which, he thought, would be perfect for small trinkets such as these.

His order was met only with silence. He looked at the girl again; she was trembling.

"You killed her…" she said in the same slow, pensive tone, looking him straight in the face with suddenly thoughtful eyes; it was as though she only now was realising this truth, even though she had screamed it into his face before. "You killed her, and Jaheira, and Khalid, and here I am, walking with you, talking to you as if—as if it was okay, as if nothing had happened… But it's not okay. It isn't."

Abruptly, she fell silent.

Sarevok cursed internally. "Little sister," he said, trying to curb his irritation and his instinct, both of which whispered to him to simply kill the sibling and be done with her, "I thought that we were clear on this matter—"

"If you hadn't killed her—if you hadn't killed them all—I wouldn't be here!" banshee-like, the girl screamed out.

"I highly doubt it. The timing of the strike was unequivocal: the wizard evidently waited to see which two of the three of us would survive. If your party had killed me, you would have found yourself here all the same."

But the girl paid him no heed; she merely looked at him and at the room with vacant eyes, retreated into herself, collapsed into a world of her own, shivering; clutching the necklace feverishly, as though it were a protective charm designed to ward off evil and not simply a minimally enchanted wizard's amulet.

He tried again. "Little sister," he called out to her forsaken logic, "I have no use for you if you cannot control yourself. If you cannot think straight, how can you perform your role adequately? And so, unless you calm down, I may as well kill you; and I would much rather not kill you, not yet. Do not make me kill you, little sister," he implored, "Calm down."

But again, there was no response; in the end, he picked the girl carefully and directed her to a small bench standing in a corner. She did not particularly resist; quite the contrary, she was limp under his touch, almost like a puppet.

He forced her to look into his eyes. "Little sister—" he began, and then paused.

"Imoen," he started again, "Imoen, listen to me. I will scout the road ahead. Meanwhile, do try to pull yourself together. When I return, you will be either composed or not here at all. Are we understood?"

Without waiting for her reply, he made for the forge's far end.


	3. I: The Opening, 3

**Siblings**

**Part I: The Opening**

**3**

He withdrew the sword from the doppelganger's guts and considered.

The beast in the pit below had, no doubt, been set there to devour the remainders of the wizard's experiments; the dwarves had had access to it to feed it. But the narrow steps in front of him must lead—

He looked behind: the little sister was still sitting there, still with a vacant, absent air, still shaken by spasms, sobbing.

It was a pity that she was a sibling, he must admit that much after he had seen her work her trade. He might find some use for her otherwise: she was a proficient—trap-detecting monkey, to use her own expression—and sufficiently good with the bow; and she was a killer. Murderer, no; not yet; though that, too, would surely come in the fullness of time as the taint, still hidden, emerged and made itself known; but killer she was, even now. She enjoyed hunting the mephits omnipresent in this place; enjoyed the killing of the wizard's smiths; enjoyed the appeal of a well-aimed shot, a well-placed blow; a well-executed kill. Yes; it was a pity that she was a sibling and that he would kill her.

For now, however, she was unstable; and, weak as he was, he needed her. There was no use denying it; hence, he must return for her. Perhaps outside of the forge's noxious fumes, she would recover faster; or at all.

He noticed again the grey, amorphous mass of the shape-shifter's body as he led the girl into the doppelganger's pen; then, upon further consideration, bent, picked it up and threw it into the pit below. Imoen might not welcome the sight as the first upon her recovery; Frennedan's kind, his servants, had been her enemies.

The doppelganger had tried to call on their shared history to have Sarevok rescue him from the wizard's prison; and, when the man had sifted through his memories, amidst all the lacunae he had found, he had found the relevant remembrance; and once he had found it, had found himself clutching desperately to it— But this did not change the fact that Frennedan was wasted; that he must have been as hungry as hungry Sarevok was himself; and that his kind were eaters of human flesh.

A split second passed as the Bhaalspawn must wonder: how many days had he gone without eating, sustained only by the wizard's magic? Then, he berated himself for the thought: it did not matter, in the end, of course: if he managed to escape, he would eatthen; if he did not, then he… would not.

He cast one last look at the sibling, gathered himself and started to ascend the staircase.

---

Once upstairs, he looked around. He had been correct: the barrel-vaulted crypt was a crossroads of sorts, with three paths radiating outwards, to what he guessed must be the armoury, the genie's cavern, and the library, all behind those closed, warded doors Imoen could not open. The doors on whose other side he now was; he, and the fourth corridor.

There was a door here, too, but, as far as he could tell, it was not warded. He kicked it in, in a sudden influx of anger; and, to his amazement, when the dust fell, for a short moment he found himself being, of all possible things, his foster father's son.

Incarnadine sarsenet bed-covers and heavy, golden cloth-of-gold bed-hangings; walls panelled in linenfold; a thick Cormyrian rug on the floor; an exquisite chaise longue upholstered in kidskin; a pewter-and-mithril candelabrum in the room's every corner—and the list, he was sure, was far from complete: the wizard's private chambers were an essay into opulent luxury bordering on inexcusable tastelessness.

Forcing himself to snap out of this mercantile reverie and into remembering that they must make haste; they need be a moving target to even contemplate a successful escape—he scanned the chamber briefly, again, with, not a business man's, but a fighting man's, eyes. It was empty; the splendid inlaid rosewood cabinets were, more likely than not, locked; he would leave it to open them to the little sister.

He was about to retrace his path when a glimpse of movement caught his eye. Hence, he entered the side passage, instead; and found himself in a grove.

---

For a moment, shocked, he did nothing but stood there, gaping like some daft druid at the sheer lushness of the verdure: the carpet of grass below his feet, as thick as the rug in the neighbouring chamber; the dark bark of the trees; the dense canopy above. Was this really so easy; had he already escaped? But no; the darkness which peeked through the tree-crowns was not that of a starless sky; it was a ceiling. This place had been rendered this pocket paradise through nothing else but arcane artifice; it was the wizard's, and not nature's, magic which prevented the plants from dying—

"Who are you? Another of the wizard's servants, coming here to taunt these caged spirits? Begone, evil one; Irenicus has taken all; you can harm us no more."

"I daresay I might still find a way or two, if I wanted," Sarevok replied to the disembodied voices, "But I serve no one. Show yourselves, creatures!"

They did: three women came out from within the trees, attractive and scantily clad; and Sarevok remembered, again, how once, in another lifetime, before he had learnt that he might be a god, he had been a man.

He quickly stifled the sentiment; there were more important matters to concentrate on.

"If not the wizard's servant, then you must be the wizard's prisoner," said one of the women.

"As are we," added a second.

"Help us!" implored the third.

Sarevok looked from one beautiful face to another.

"Why?" he asked simply. "Do you have anything to offer in return?"

The three faces froze in surprise; a moment later, the women started to cast knowing looks between themselves.

The foremost woman had just made a move, as if she was about to speak, when Sarevok added in a lazy drawl, "Anything useful? Food? Water? Information?"

The relief on the three faces was palpable; the woman on the left said, "We have food and water. We can share them with you!"

"And information, too! What do you want to know?" said the woman to the right.

"The wizard. Irenicus," Sarevok almost spit out the name.

"Irenicus," echoed the foremost woman.

"The Shattered One," added the leftmost one.

"Incomplete." This time, it was the rightmost woman who had spoken.

"Marred." The leftmost one again.

"Defiled." Again the rightmost one.

"He still loves her, you know?" finished the woman in the centre, "We sometimes go into her room and look at the things."

"_Her_ room?" Sarevok asked. The three women wordlessly stepped aside, opening a way for him to pass.

Sarevok squinted. There was a faint light coming through the thick foliage.

---

He stepped into the room, and was immediately greeted by the ear-splitting sound of an activating alarm. He swore loudly: that was what came of walking through unfamiliar places without one skilled in trap-spotting.

The presence of an alarm meant the presence of guardians summoned by the alarm; perchance, even, the wizard himself. As fast as he could, he ran away from the place, back through the grove, and into the wizard's chamber.

He was about to leave it through the shattered door when the two golems entered the room.

Sarevok swore again; then, he _reached_—

_Hello, Father._

---

There was... pain.

There was darkness.

There was the face of the wizard, carving another extremely intricate, detailed sigil in his skin and flesh with one of those very special knives.

There was the face of Father, killing him with a blade made of human bone.

There was the face of the little sister, approaching him with a look of pure hatred on her face and with a lightly enchanted dagger in her hand.

There was pain.

---

There was the cool touch of a healing potion on his lips.

He swallowed a sip and tried to speak. "Wh—"

"No," he heard a voice. "No, big brother. Drink."

He drank.

He drank and drank, one potion after another, without opening his eyes; he felt the damaged tissue of his flesh mend and heal; the scattered shards of broken bone diffuse into nothingness; the bone itself restore, reset.

At last, there wasn't another potion at his lips; and he opened his eyes.

There was an unpleasant chill on his skin; on the tender, newly healed flesh. A part of his mind analysed the sensation, and reached a conclusion: he had no armour on, not even the provisional plates he had put on before.

He felt naked.

A moment later, he discovered that he _was_ naked, at least in part; Imoen must have cut not only through the straps he had used to fix the armour, but also through the cloth he had been wearing underneath; probably so that they would not contaminate the wound and interfere with the process of healing.

"Don't worry about that," he heard an annoyingly merry voice pipe up, "The dryads told me where to search for the wizard's clothes. We found something that we think can fit you, big brother."

"Oh," he managed to utter, and instantly wished that he had not.

Fortunately, the girl did not notice his momentary weakness; indeed, instead, a grimy face crowned with tangled, matted brown hair appeared in his field of vision. "And an armour, too!" the little sister chirruped whilst he noted that she had the wizard necklace fastened around her neck. "So, dress, and I'll go see what's in the other room. We'll eat, and then, we'll go help Malaaq—"

Sarevok blinked slowly, trying to fashion a means to regain the irretrievably lost control.

To initiate the battle, he started to raise himself into a sitting position; the sibling, as he noticed with some small satisfaction, immediately backed off slightly. "—Ulene and the others have some things to eat, if you want," she said, starting to her feet; and he suddenly remembered the dryads' promise to feed them.

She turned to the exit which led to the grove; she was already leaving the room when Sarevok called out.

"As much as it warms my heart, sibling, to find you in such high spirits… Who is Malaaq?"

---

The little sister turned around, and he saw in her face, mirrored clearly, that, for all wizard's necklaces and all wizard's imprisonments, for all her newfound crutches and all his newfound emaciation; for all his nakedness—agreeably, she still feared him. She backed off a step.

"Malaaq," she said slowly, "is Aataqah. It's his real name. He is a prisoner here, like everyone else, Cania and Elyme told me… Irenicus made a wish, see? Malaaq has to confuse the paths and everyone around here, so no one can get out of this place without Irenicus' permission…" She must have noticed his sudden fury, because she added, pleading hurriedly, "We don't have to kill him to get out! The dryads have his flask, and he has their acorns, see? They can't help each other, even if they wanted to, and Irenicus likes it that way. But if we take the flask to him, and wish for the acorns, and for the way out, and make a third wish—Irenicus won't make a third wish, and that's what's keeping Malaaq here, see?—and if we take the acorns to the surface, we'll help everyone!"

He wondered if she knew how those who wished things from a genie terminated par for the course; but that offended him less; he smirked. "Little sister, who do you take me for? An errand boy?"

The little sister backed off another step, so that she was not standing inside the room any more, but on the soft soil of the grove. But when she replied, her voice was firm.

"No, Sarevok, I don't. But, you know," she added, with sweet, offensive mischievousness, "the dryads told me that the genie is here also to protect a powerful magical object. And that he's forbidden to give it to anyone. That was Irenicus' second wish. But if we have Malaaq's flask, we can wish for that thing, too— And you know what, brother?" she added, clearly riding high on her emotion, "We'll do it this way. My way. Because, you know what, big brother? We're even. We're even, and I'm going there, and I'm going to help the genie. Not kill him. Even if this means wishing things from him—" So she did know, he noted, absently, watching the girl. "And you—you can't stop me, because you know that otherwise, I won't help you. And you need my help. And you know that, and I know that, and so, we'll do it my way this time!" she finished, flushing from excitement.

That precisely, he must endeavour to make her forget. "Are you finished trying to blackmail me, little sister? If so, go. Play with your toys. We must move soon."

"Tough," Imoen retorted. "Because, as a matter of fact, I'm not finished, and we're not going anywhere, except to help the genie." Suddenly, she noticed that he noticed that she was fingering Irene's necklace, and forcefully removed her hand. Too forcefully: leaving him an easy opening on which to capitalise.

"I see that, for all your brave words, you are nervous, sibling. Do I frighten you?"

Imoen started to speak, "You know very well that you do, Sarevok—"

"Good," the man growled, taking a step towards her. "So go."

Then, after a moment, he added, "And hurry. The genie, no doubt, eagerly awaits salvation at your hand."

Imoen blinked. She must think she won, hopefully.

---

The little sister had found herself a crutch to lean on; therefore, Sarevok had found himself loth remembering a lesson in mercantile lore. When bargaining from an inferior position, yield a little; allow your opponents a modicum of success; inebriated with the conquest, they will overlook the greater loss. Mercantile lore: long beneath his contempt. The Son of Murder stands in no position but that of utter supremacy.

The little sister found herself a crutch to lean on, and Sarevok found himself putting on—clothes; he preferred not to think of their rightful owner. They barely fit, even though he had lost much of his muscle even as he had accumulated scars.

The armour was an elven chain mail, light, unenchanted, and golden in colour; not comparable to his old Deathbringer's armour, of course; but it, too, would do for now, as it must.

He went back into the grove: the dryads had disappeared, but he found that there was a small pile of fruit laid out on the ground under one of the trees. He sat next to it and started to eat; he could not eat much, he knew, or else he might vomit all; but, as the smell and taste reached him, he discovered slowly how hungry he really was: unbearably so.

The sibling emerged from the room not much later, carrying a bundle of miscellany. She, too, began to eat; as hungrily as he did. He might warn her against overeating, he supposed, but the girl had spent several months in the wilderness after he had driven her sister and her out of Candlekeep; and so, she must surely know certain things on her own.

"Tell me, Sarevok," she said suddenly, and without ever stopping munching on the fruit, "What was it that you did back there? With the golems, I mean?"

He looked at her, surprised. He could not decide what was more startling: that, even now, she dared attempt to strike a casual conversation with him; or that she did not know. "What did you see?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Not much. I drank an oil of speed when I heard the alarm, and when I reached the top of the stairs, you had already destroyed one golem— You fought very well there," she threw in, unashamed.

"It is gratifying to know that I have earned approval in your eyes, little sister."

The girl proved immune to his sarcasm. "It was really bad luck that the second fell on you the way it did, I guess. But you were," another shrug. "I don't know. Yourself, I suppose. But more so."

It was surprising, perhaps, that she noticed as much, with her lackadaisical attitude to her heritage and her ancestry; in the end, he replied matter-of-factly, "I released Father's powers."

The girl blinked. "Oh."

And then, merciless, she insisted on continuing the topic.

"Irene could do something like that, too, you know? She could heal herself from time to time," she chirruped on, "And she could slow the spread of poison through her body. And once, she killed an ogre just by touching it and healed herself at the same time. But she did that just once. She said it made her feel weird…"

He let her talk; and, once she was finished, asked, "What did you find in the room?"

"Some spells," the sibling replied, "some potions, some gems, jewellery, and the Mistress' keys, whoever she is. Is that how you broke out of your cage?"

"Yes. Any diary? Journal?"

"Not every villain keeps a diary, you know... Did it hurt? 'Cause, I must tell you, you've just winced."

"Which, I'm certain, makes you absolutely ecstatic, sibling. So, there was nothing?"

"No. Nothing!" the girl nearly yelled out. "Stop it! I'd also love to know what are the most intimate thoughts of my torturer, but there was nothing."

"He must keep some records of his experiments," he said, more to himself than to her. There had been none in his brief perusal of the library.

"Well, I'm not staying here to search for them," the girl retorted angrily. "And what would you need them for, anyway?"

Sarevok looked at her coolly. "Haven't you listened to what you heard, sibling? Irenicus knows how to deal with our powers."

"I was too busy being cut, burnt and otherwise tortured," she shot back. "But yes, it figures that you would like to release… our… potential! And, let me guess, when we left this place, I was to be your test bunny in turn?"

This amused him. "Perhaps."

"Sarevok," the girl said, with utter conviction and without missing a beat, "you're a bastard."

"Yes, I am," he replied, still quite amused. "But I am not the only one, _sister_."

As her eyes narrowed—and he knew exactly what the girl must be doing: trying to find precisely how she might hurt him most; and failing—he added slowly, relishing every word, "Don't think too highly of yourself, sibling. Again: have you ever listened to what you were told? _The Lord of Murder shall perish, but he shall leave in his wake a score of mortal progeny…_ A score, sister: not one, not two, not three; a score. You would do well to remember this. Take it as… brotherly advice."

This was met only with silence.

In silence, the siblings watched each other; suspiciously and resentfully on Imoen's part; coolly and with detachment on her brother's.

The man was the first to speak, "We must move. Lead the way, sister."

---

In effortless concord, the Children of Murder killed the otyugh which emerged from the darkness of the pit under the crossroads; and that, even though Imoen had never seen an otyugh before, and must ask Sarevok its name and appellation.

Then, with the key of Irenicus' absent mistress, they undid the wards and opened the door to the genie's dim, peaceful cavern; and then, they exchanged the genie's flask for three wishes: three dryads' acorns, the way out, and the enchanted object in Aataqah's safekeeping.

Aataqah, whose true name was Malaaq, gave them the acorns; touched the flask; in doing so, took the siblings to a place much different from the underground cave; not a prison, but his true home; a place where Imoen had never been and which she would gladly forego visiting again; a place saturated with cold wind which hurt her eardrums and which made her eyes water; a small, unsafe, wobbling wooden platform suspended in the middle of a nothingness, on no supports—

She looked around, slack-jawed. _You__ must rise_, she remembered. But that much? She wondered if this was the proverbial genie's gratitude, and this place, the way out he had prepared for them; a way out, but into a vertiginous Aeolian abyss.

But before her, "Beware," Malaaq was telling Sarevok, "Leave as quickly as you can. For escaping, the Master will punish you. But for releasing his djinn slave, he will kill you. And now, for your last wish, Bhaalspawn—" Bhaalspawn; again. Between talks of potential and Irenicus' experiments, she had long lost the last delusion that through that name, the genie meant only the man standing next to her.

Malaaq disappeared; and they were in Irenicus' dungeon, back in the dark cell from which they had started their trek through the prison, but before a patch of the wall which was now a corridor; and Imoen saw the sword lying on the floor. Not just any sword; the sword.

Sarevok watched it hungrily, as if he expected it to follow the genie's lead and vanish any moment. When it did not, with a short, abrupt move he cast aside the plain, unenchanted blade he had been carrying before, with such force that it rebounded from the steel bars of a cage, far away— Then, tenderly, he knelt, took the ornate sword, swiftly rose and made a practice cut; the blade fit him and his hand perfectly; as it well should, having been tailored particularly for him.

Then, Imoen's brother turned to her and said, with emotion, "Sister. This time, I must bow to your superior reasoning; and this bout, I am happy to forfeit!"

And then, he laughed; and, as she watched the mad sparks glitter in the man's eyes, deep within the darkness of the helm of the man he had once killed; as she listened to his deep laughter, rebounding from the prison walls—Imoen decided that wishes asked of genies do, after all, have a way of turning to ill; and that she would much rather not have had her point.


	4. I: The Opening, 4

**Siblings**

**Part I: The Opening**

**4**

"Kirisute gomen."

_Kirisute gomen_, her brother said, pulling the blade out of the dead man's corpse; and Imoen's thoughts flew back to that peaceful evening in the citadel of Candlekeep, when, while reading a book, her mind suddenly came across this little, curious Eastern phrase. _Kirisute gomen_: I am sorry, but the point of fact is that you simply are my inferior; and that it simply is my gods-bestowed right to test the sharpness of my sword upon your body. _Kirisute gomen_. Sarevok.

"What did you do that for?" she asked, uncomprehending.

"I didn't like his face," her brother answered.

She looked down, at the pleasant Kara-Turan face, now forever frozen in a deathly rictus.

"You didn't like his face," she repeated numbly.

"Yes."

And that was it, she knew; no other answer was forthcoming. _Kirisute gomen, _Yoshimo the stranger: I'm your better. You die.

Weakly, she tried again. "I suppose it didn't cross your mind to simply not let him join us?" A face. A human face. A pleasant human face. A face of someone with whom to talk; with whom to walk; with whom to laugh. And, perhaps most important, the face of one who wasn't the wizard, or insane, or Sarevok.

"And leave him behind?" Sarevok asked, without special rancour. "Forgive me, sibling, but this one lesson I have learnt already. You leave no one behind."

"No," she replied, even though she knew that she was fighting a doomed battle; but still, somehow, unable to let go. "You kill them."

The next moment, she found herself crashing into a wall; and Sarevok leaning over her, and cupping her chin, and forcing her to look straight into his eyes, precisely the way she abhorred. "Yes. I kill them, sibling," he growled. "I will kill everyone we meet until we leave this place. And especially someone who claims to be a prisoner, but is well-informed, well-fed, and well-groomed. I already have to trust you, sibling; call me a miser, but I don't have enough trust to spread across two people."

"And it's better to be on the safe side, right, brother?" Imoen said, with unexpected anger. The wall behind her was extremely cold.

"Unlike you, I'm not suicidal, sister," he replied, and let go of her.

"Suicidal?! I'm not the one who—" I'm not the one who walks about dungeons blindly triggering tripwires, she wanted to say; but she wasn't given the opportunity, because Sarevok interrupted; and this time, he wasn't amused.

"I did say that I do not have enough trust to spread across two people, little sister."

She registered the fact that she had been demoted back to little sister; understood the implication of Sarevok's statement; and bit her lip. "Oh. And I suppose that I'm the one easier to intimidate, aren't I?"

"Perhaps," the man replied.

"Perhaps," Imoen replied, mimicking his tone. "Or perhaps he wasn't kin, and you couldn't use him as your test rat once we get out of here!"

"Enough," Sarevok said coldly. "Little sister, amusing as your paranoid theories are, it is high time your fixation on them stopped. Consider this, instead: if I had no intention of honouring our accord, I had in that third-grade crook a more than adequate replacement for you. Furthermore, as I have attempted to indicate to you already—you are not unique; there are kin outside."

"But first, we have to reach the outside, brother," Imoen replied, considering Sarevok's argument and rejecting it immediately. "And he knew at least a part of the way out!"

"Yes. He knew it, but didn't use it, sister," Sarevok said; and she noticed that she had risen in his opinion again. She wondered in passing what she would have to do to have him stop calling her kinship terms at all. Probably murder someone in cold blood, she decided; in any case, the prize wasn't worth the price.

"Whatever you say, big brother," she said, suddenly sick of arguing with the murderer; the sooner they left this place, and each other's presence, the better. "I'll try to shoot down those mephits from behind the door, but keep close in case they twig on where we are."

---

She felt the stone move in her sleeve as she walked by the murderer's side, down the labyrinth's middle path, killing with him mephit after mephit, seeking without him pitfalls and traps; the pommel jewel was a beljuril, and thus extremely valuable.

She found it shortly after they had entered the corridor Malaaq had opened for them; in the first chamber the passage opened upon, in fact. By that time, they had been searching for the way out for several hours already, but the wizard—Irenicus—had not started searching for them; and, somewhere deep within Imoen's heart, a small glimmer of hope kindled. Perhaps, she thought, just perhaps, something had happened to the wizard, and he would not return at all…

Perhaps it was all a cruel game, like the genie's game, another experiment, this time designed to test how the wizard's precious prisoners would cooperate under pressure; to give them this glimmer of hope, just so that it could be crushed at the last moment.

Or perhaps all of this was just a dream, a drunken dream, because she and Irene had drunk too much in the Helm and Cloak with those cuties from the Gorpel Hind after killing Sarevok— She would have liked this scenario, pure escapist fantasy though it was.

Then, all the torture would have been just a dream; that, and Sarevok, and herself the Bhaalspawn, and Xan's mutilated body lying on the metal slab in front of her.

---

Xan had been… kind.

Xan… eternally unhappy, eternally disgruntled, eternally proclaiming the futility of all action and the inexorable approach of doom. Xan: the one who had taught Irene Irene's first spells; not especially brave, or especially skilled in using that weird sword, that Moonblade, of his; or even a very good companion. Someone whom Imoen had not loved.

He had been kind, and he probably deserved a better epitaph, from someone who had loved him. He would not receive it, of course; and the best Imoen could do was to say that Xan had been kind to her. If she even had ever known else, or more—if Xan had saved her life on some occasion, or told her something funny, or laughed at her own joke—it was all lost in the many gaps within her memory.

She remembered his screams under Irenicus' knife. That was rather hard to forget.

She moved to close his eyes, and belatedly remembered that there were no eyes, of course; no eyes, and no eyelids.

Between that and the sweet smell of the decaying flesh, she threw up.

---

As soon as she recovered, she grew angry with herself. She should have known better than to lose precious nutrients at the sight of a several-day-old corpse. She had seen worse. She had seen, and fought, decaying corpses that moved. Ghouls. Ghasts. Zombies. She should not have let herself throw up just because this corpse, in particular, had once been a not entirely friend.

The vomit left in her mouth an acerbic, acrid aftertaste, and she started to work.

---

When Sarevok returned, she was almost finished. She checked the dark corners of the room for possible traps; opened all locks on all the containers that she could open, and searched them for all those small, valuable trinkets which they might sell, if ever they reached anyone to sell them to; and, in vain, for an invisibility potion. She found a piece of cloth and covered the body. She did not cry, although she did try to remember some—any—good memory of Xan's; she failed. She found out that she could take out the pommel jewel from its casing in the elf's sword, and did so, without much compunction; not because it had been her friend's, but because it was a beljuril, and thus, extremely valuable. At last, she packed everything else; she was about to leave the place when Sarevok returned.

When Sarevok returned, he was preceded by a large noise that was not quite an explosion.

He entered the room from the darkness of a side-exit, striding like the duke she had helped prevent him from becoming; cast a look around, not failing to notice, she was sure, the small puddle of vomit next to the metal slab. She braced for the inevitable derision, and then, decided that she might as well strike first and defend herself while attacking.

"Quite an entrance, brother," she said with a smirk. "Any other tripwire you missed?"

"Not really, sister," Sarevok replied. "Are you finished here?"

"Yes," she said. "What happened here, by the way? One moment I look, you're here, and the next—poof! You aren't. I was just about to go on by myself. Haven't you thought to leave a note? As in: About to kill someone and explode something?"

Sarevok looked at her askew, and a small, cruel smile twisted his lips. "Consider it common politeness, or, if you prefer, an expression of good will," he said calmly. "Would you have preferred to perform last rites on your dead friend in my presence?"

Imoen felt her face harden. "Don't you dare, brother," she warned through gritted teeth. There were some things one simply did not joke about.

Then, she pressed on, "What really happened? I think I have a right to know if your clumsiness is going to bring another lot of golems on our heads." Suddenly, she felt like a petulant child, even if she knew she was not.

"And what happened to stealth, and avoiding attracting Irenicus' notice, anyway? That fancier pointy stick of yours didn't save you from him before, you know," she added viciously.

Sarevok watched her with his executioner's eyes; but, to her own surprise, she was evidently becoming immune to their scrutinising gaze. She still wasn't scared, only furious.

"I met a clone of Irenicus' mistress," he said simply. "I heard her voice when you were—" He hesitated for a moment before continuing, this time in an unequivocally contemptuous tone, "rooted to the spot by the sight of a dead body. And since you stubbornly continued to be even more unresponsive than usual, it befell me to investigate on my own, without the benefit of your august advice."

"And since she's not here, this means you killed her," Imoen finished the story. She should have expected the ending, and she was not even curious to hear the middle part anymore.

"Yes. I did," Sarevok replied, nonetheless. "And before you ask, sister—I learnt nothing important. The clone knew nothing. And the room was a dead end."

Imoen hadn't intended to ask. The clone, or clones, was dead. And something had not-quite-exploded. And Sarevok, no doubt, had an excellent reason to give for that as well; except that she did not want to listen to it. "I've packed the things," she said. "Let's move on."

Then, frowning, she halted; actually, she did have one question. "How come you knew she was just a clone, and not the original?"

Her presumed sibling smirked. "There were seven of them, little sister."

---

Seven of them; seven shards of a splintered personality; six, growing, floating in jars not unlike Rielev's; and the one, the adult one, the one that had escaped. Insane, yelling her woes at him, yelling that she was not what he thought she would be—she had attacked him on sight, thinking him, Irenicus; and had told him nothing, save the one thing her corpse had told him, the one of which the sister would remain ignorant. The wizard's mistress had been an elf; and those led long lives. If he managed to escape, to disappear from Irenicus' sight—

First things first. First, he had to escape.

(Nevertheless, it had been a thoroughly satisfying feeling to destroy the clone chamber. Apart from the enjoyment he had derived from spoiling Irenicus' work, the clones had reminded him all too much of his own life's original purpose—)

"Wait!"

He felt the tug on his hand through the cloth-thin chain mail, and cursed internally as he realised that he had almost walked into a trap, again.

Imoen was already kneeling by the wobbling floor slabs— "This way, brother," she said carefully after a few moments; then, after they rounded a corner, with awe, "What's that?"

He must frown. "A containment field, sister."

"Not that," the girl, halted in her tracks, replied, "I know that. I mean that thing inside it."

He looked at the silhouette contained within the shimmering blue field which enclosed the dead end of the corridor. "A cambion." A half-fiend; it should be capable of speech and intelligence, but, beastlike, it only snarled at the pair of them.

Imoen took a step closer to the horned, orange-skinned, six-armed, naked creature; and, mirthlessly, laughed. "Tell me… Doesn't this rather put a halt to your theory that I'm a Bhaalspawn, Sarevok? How many people interesting enough to keep alive we've seen so far here?"

The question, daft as its reason was, caught his attention. He must admit, he had not expected Irenicus' menagerie to be that broad and disparate— But its size and purpose was also a matter for another day and time. To the girl's question, just as she expected, there was; and, given her skill, regrettably so—only one answer.

"No, sister. It does not," he replied, truthfully, watching her reaction; now, she offered no protest.

They withdrew from the passage; in the next cell, they met Yoshimo, the helpful thief, whom Sarevok killed.

---

The hallway at the end of the middle passage was large, badly lit and, currently, a combat zone.

On their side of it, several duergar had erected a makeshift barricade, and were shooting out from beyond it at the far end of the room small crossbow bolts, fast and deadly. In return, they were being pelted with arrows, as Imoen discovered when one lodged itself not half a palm-length away from her head in the soft wood of the door she had just opened.

Imoen blinked, and returned quickly into the safety behind the door.

"Um," she said.

"How eloquent," Sarevok drawled behind. "Anything else you noticed, little sister?"

"Let me think!" she snapped, annoyed. "Four of five duergar. They're shooting, but I've no idea who at. It looks like it's gone on for some time already, 'cause there's a lot of arrows on the floor. Seems the hall's trapped, if all they can do is shoot."

This time, the Bhaalspawn's voice sounded the slightest bit respectful. "How far away from the door?"

"Some five paces," she replied quickly, sensing his intent. "They are busy, though. With strength and speed potions, I can kill one or perhaps even two before they realise what's going on."

"No shooting from behind the door this time?" he asked, amused, and she felt offended at this suggestion. "Not really, no."

"Then make it two, sister," the murderer replied; Imoen took the small flasks from the makeshift bag where they carried potions, drank them, and set off into the shadows on the other side of the door.

---

The few minutes which followed were quite chaotic.

As Imoen predicted, she was able to move behind the back of the closest duergar before anyone even noticed her. A split second later, she cut the deep dwarf's throat; her strength, enhanced by the potion, now enough to tear through the skin and the muscle below.

She was by the second duergar by the time she was discovered; but by then, Sarevok was already in the room, and already making his way towards the barricade.

Then, in a bout of back luck, a shot from across the room hit Sarevok; the arrow slid on the chains of the mail and embedded itself in his left shoulder. The man hissed out in pain, but he recovered almost instantly, and continued to walk towards the duergar. Resplendent in his golden chain mail, attention-grabbing like the cruel mockery of a paladin that he was, he detracted the dwarves' notice for just the precious moment that Imoen needed to make a leap at the next duergar, Ilyich, as the others called him.

And then, the screams on the other side of the room started; and again none of the three dwarves still remaining in the room refrained from casting a split-second look. And this was enough; Sarevok, who did not look, raised his sword high, and bore it down on one of them in a vicious blow. On her part, Imoen, who did not look away, either, did her dirty job quickly and skilfully; when the last dwarf was impaled on Sarevok's sword, it turned out that, apart from the arrow in Sarevok's arm, neither sibling was in any way harmed.

They both crouched behind the makeshift blockade, made, as they could now see, of wood and metal thrown together in a haphazard way. "What do you see, sister?" Sarevok asked, trying to pull the arrow out of his wound.

"Almost nothing," Imoen replied, peeking carefully over the barricade. "There is someone, moving very quickly, but it's dark here—oh," she said suddenly.

"What?" Sarevok growled out. The arrow was out of the wound, and he was trying to stop the flow of blood with the least of his innate powers. It hurt, of course; the wizard had done something which made it hurt to use his divine gifts; another of Irenicus' crimes, for which the man would one day pay. The background screams, he noted absently, died out.

Imoen did not reply, but merely nudged him; Sarevok, surprised and annoyed by this display of informality, looked up at her; and, on seeing the look on her face, in the direction where she was looking.

At least it was not Irenicus.

---

This time, Imoen had no objections to Sarevok's penchant for killing.

The utterly weird, almost naked, predatory-looking, blood-covered woman was still standing motionless, apparently transfixed by the trickle of blood flowing from Sarevok's wound, when the man rose in one fluid movement and ran her through with his cruel sword; only to be greeted this time by the utter lack of a corpse.

"She has made herself invisible!" Sarevok warned unnecessarily; Imoen was already on her feet, and scanning the room for a possible illusion. But even a moment later there was still nothing; no one attacked them; the woman vanished as suddenly and as cryptically as she had appeared.

Sarevok lowered the blade of his sword in disgust. "Whoever she was, she's gone."

Then, he sat down heavily in his former spot and, giving up every pretence of self-healing, reached for a potion.

Imoen looked at him, almost human again as he was in his weakness, and decided that it was time to take charge again. "I'll go see if the hall's trapped. You see if there's anything on the duergar, all right, brother?"

She received no reply as she climbed the barricade.

---

It turned out that the hallway was, indeed, trapped; but the traps were not above Imoen's skill; she worked them out, and returned to Sarevok.

Whereupon she found him sitting on the floor amidst their spread possessions, quite recovered and rather amused, in that cruel, cold, evil way of his; and thus, instantly grew suspicious; as it soon turned out, for a very good reason.

"Here, little sister," Sarevok said, looking at her curiously, as if in anticipation of her reaction. "Catch."

And he threw something—a little trinket—in her direction; precisely the way one would throw a bone to a dog which had behaved well. Imoen did not catch it; instead, she dodged it and let it fall to the floor. With some demonstrative excess, she cast a broad look at the piles of Sarevok's and her belongings. They were not many, she thought, but at least slightly more than Irene and she had had after leaving Candlekeep.

The little trinket fell to the floor with a loud clang, and then rolled a few steps on the stone tiles of the floor before coming to a rest in one of the gaps between the tiles. When it did, Imoen finally let it occupy her attention.

Constantly feeling the harsh look of Sarevok's eyes on herself, she walked up—again defiantly slowly—to it, and picked it up. Her heart tightened momentarily as she recognised the ring she was holding, but this time, she was very careful not to allow herself to show the feeling on her face.

"Hmm," she said instead, turning it between her fingers. "Isn't it the tiny ring you gave Irene in Candlekeep, brother? Just before you framed us into killing your foster father?"

It was clear that whatever reaction Sarevok had expected of her, virulently disinterested honesty was definitely not it. It was really hard to restrain herself from laughing at the sight of his momentarily bemused expression. Gotcha!she thought, and immediately felt the slightest bit better.

As before, however, Sarevok recovered quickly. "Indeed, it is," he replied amiably. "And, I see, she chose to keep it. I do hope that it served her well in her travels, little sister."

"Well, not really," Imoen replied sweetly, half-by-half hurting and fuming inside. "Given how you killed her, and all…"

"Then, by all means, let me hope that it will serve you better, sibling," Sarevok replied, and this time, Imoen could not contain her anger any longer.

"What?!I'm not taking this thing!" she said, vaguely conscious that she was looking at the golden band as if it were about to bite her.

"Little sister," she heard the amused voice from the ground. "It is slightly enchanted. And you are more exposed than I am."

Above the ring, Imoen looked at her murderous brother and replied, meaning every word, "Well, yeah. But logic isn't all, Sarevok."

"As you wish, then," she heard as the only reply. She wished she had made a tally of how many times she had heard this particular phrase; she had hated it every single time.

"What have you found on the other side?" she heard a moment later. Sarevok was not looking at her anymore; instead, he was now occupying himself with re-arranging their loot, trying to fit everything together so that it would least hamper their movements.

She moved to help him. Her muscles screamed in despair at the thought that she must carry the bags again; and, unless Sarevok really was the machine he pretended to be before the genuine articles dispelled his pretence, he must be more than slightly tired himself. Perhaps they ought to make a slightly longer break, and even have a bit of sleep before they moved on. "Humans, no one I recognised, and they had nothing odd on themselves, not even money, just short swords, arrows and bows. They look as if an animal attacked them," she said. "Large wounds; almost as if she had ripped them to shreds. And the weird thing… for the size of the wounds, there was very little blood. Almost none, in fact."

"She had much of it on herself," Sarevok remarked casually. "Perhaps she was a werewolf. Or a druid."

"Or a vampire," Imoen said, and shuddered.

---

They stopped by the bodies, and Sarevok took a good look at them himself; but, judging from the lack of comments, he either found nothing more than Imoen, or decided to keep the information to himself.

Then, they opened the half-closed door behind the bodies, and were both momentarily blinded: harsh sunlight, not twenty paces in front of them, hit their eyes. Familiar sounds of fighting: of arrows released and magic sizzling in the air—reached them; and, between them, a voice familiar to them both.

_I can see no further. The Master is there,_ Rielev had told them—

Imoen took a deep breath; in the corner of her eye, she could see Sarevok do the same.

"It seems, little sister, that we are out," he said with what, Imoen knew by now, was artificial calm. "And that Irenicus is slightly… distracted."

"Yes," she replied, fervently trying to keep her own cool. "Let's see what happens now."


	5. I: The Opening, 5

**Siblings**

**Part I: The Opening**

**5**

Slowly and carefully, Imoen and Sarevok made their way towards the exit through the cold, stone antechamber; and Imoen wished, once again, that she had an invisibility potion. If she had it; or if, at least, it were night, her chances to escape would be much better. But she was so not waiting here until nightfall. One must make one's escape while one still can.

Besides, Sarevok would not allow her to do so.

The murderer her brother was walking next to her, coiled and tense, as determined to fight or to flight as she was; and she was well aware that if the success of his escape meant leaving her behind in the process, he would have no difficulty in doing so; indeed, welcome this resolution gladly. After all, she was his sister, his kin, his prey, just as Irene had been; that, he had said, was the way of the kin. Whatever _that_ meant; for now, it meant only that if, by some weird twist of luck, they _both_ managed to escape Irenicus, she must then escape Sarevok next.

Well, perhaps all would be well, and Irenicus would concentrate on _Sarevok_ and _she_ would somehow escape. Now, wouldn't _that_ be perfect? They deserved each other.

She perked up, and told herself not to worry. Whatever would come would come.

---

The small blue slice of the sky that was the outside was crisscrossed almost constantly by magic projectiles and discharges, going, unfortunately, both ways; and so, it was impossible to determine which way Irenicus was. The two siblings edged towards the end of the tunnel carefully, Imoen tending towards the left side, Sarevok tending towards the right.

All their caution, however, boiled down to nil when a badly-aimed missile hit the roof of the tunnel just behind them and almost on top of them, pulverising it and filling their lungs and eyes with dust, and their ears with deafening noise.

When the dust settled, Irenicus was standing not five steps from Imoen; and not five steps from Sarevok stood the first of a group of wizards and archers; and they were all standing halfway up a giant amphitheatre of white marble; the space below was filled with multicoloured tents. Next to her, Sarevok swore loudly, and, however crude, this perfectly reflected Imoen's sentiment: they found themselves in the open, precisely where they had not wanted to be found.

Without one further thought, Imoen pushed once more her tired muscles to work, and started to run.

---

Imoen started to run; and, concentrated on running as she was, she did not notice that Sarevok started to run as well. Unlike her, he was not running down the slope of rubble, with the intention to disappear among the tents below; he was running towards the archers and wizards who were Irenicus' enemies, hoping to hide among them.

She did not notice how the wizards and archers recovered from the shock of the explosion, and re-started their assault on the wizard, magical and otherwise.

And she did not notice how, behind her, the one who was now nothing but Irenicus, the Shattered One, calmly scribed the lines of a Power Word in the air; and when he did, all went still and silent about: Imoen, Sarevok, the wizards and the archers. Her flight, well thought-out as it was, was remarkably short.

---

When the Power Word achieved its intended effect, Irenicus first took care of the last wave of the vermin. A simple necromantic spell was more than adequate enough to deal with the nuisance. True, it did some small harm to one of the objects; however, resilient as Irenicus had noted the Child was, there was little doubt that he would not be permanently damaged.

When the field was at last clear of the interrupting fools, Irenicus turned his attention to the Child and his sister. Apparently, they had managed to settle their differences for long enough to make their way until this point; the wizard was actually mildly impressed. The knowledge he might gain out of this inadvertent experiment might actually be worth the setbacks his intended work must inevitably suffer as a result of two siblings of Murder blazing their trail through his servants.

He examined the boy and the girl in turn; his predictions were, unsurprisingly, correct; neither appeared to be greatly harmed. He would not address them here, of course; not in the full view of those mundane creatures. No; that would wait until everything returned to the proper places: the objects to the cells, and he, to their outside.

The sound of several persons teleporting in broke his casting of his own displacement spell.

---

"_Must_ I be _constantly_ interrupted in my work?" Irenicus yelled out at someone behind Imoen's back, and she wished she could move, so that she could see what was going on. Well, actually, if she could move, she would start to run again... but the chance at last to see would also be a good thing.

"The High Council of the Cowled Wizards resolved not to allow this disruptive behaviour to continue," someone replied as, in the background, several other people started chanting spells. "For the unsanctioned use of magical energy in the city of Athkatla, and for continued attempts to resist arrest, you shall be transported to the Asylum for Magical Deviants, wherein you shall be detained until—"

At this point, the woman's voice died in an unpleasant gargle; Irenicus must have lost whatever remained of his patience. Still, Imoen was rather impressed: someone attempted to arrest the wizard. It was almost odd, that someone might actually try this.

But her good opinion of the law enforcers soon dwindled into nothingness: hit simultaneously by the shock wave of several spells, she suddenly felt sick and dizzy, as only magic can make a person be. Apparently, the wizards did not care how many bystanders died, as long as they captured their designate prey.

Irenicus must have come to the same conclusion, because she suddenly heard his voice again, loud enough to carry over another wave of spells in casting:

"_Enough_! I will not have my work spoiled by the blundering of uneducated children. Take me, if you wish. We shall see how long you will _hold_ me."

And then, he said something else; and Imoen's skin crawled. "Fare well, progeny of Murder. We shall see each other... soon."

---

The wizards left, taking Irenicus with them; and the spell which held Imoen rooted to the spot also soon ebbed away. She tried carefully to feel her limbs; and, slowly, as if moving through treacle, turned around.

Behind her, on the pile of rubble left after the explosion, there lay a heap of dead bodies; some clad in greyish-black leather, and some in grey, hooded wizard robes; all ashen-faced, almost as if they were to turn to dust the following moment. All that remained of Irenicus' attackers, those Cowled Wizards who previously tried to catch him. Poor wizards.

The three bodies which lay on top of the pile were also hooded, but looked quite differently. Imoen took one look at them, and quickly averted her eyes. Over time, wizards had come up with extremely... colourful ways to kill a person. It was not even funny how colourful the ways might be.

Then, she noticed Sarevok, ashen-faced as the bodies were, but still alive, and making his way towards her. Scared, she tried to run, but found that it was still impossible; she was so weak! Her good luck had, apparently, lasted long enough to protect her from Irenicus, but not long enough to protect her from her brother; in despair, she collapsed into an unseemly heap on the ground, waiting for her death. Life was hopeless. She was doomed.

At that, she remembered Xan, and laughed; a throaty, desperate laugh. Poor Xan. A bundle of bones and a bit of flesh. She remembered seeing his still-beating heart in his open ribcage. He always used to predict his own coming doom... and, in the end, it came. It was funny, really; and so, she laughed again. This time, she giggled.

Sarevok was looking at her oddly. Well, he was _always_ looking at her oddly, but this time, he was looking _really_ oddly. He must be thinking of how best to kill her. Sarevok. Dearest brother. So dependable.

Someone teleported in.

---

The grey-clad people teleported in, surrounding the girl and him completely; and, not for the first time, Sarevok wondered who they were and why they had attacked Irenicus in the first place; and why they were so willing to die for the cause of fighting him. Perhaps he might use them as allies; if, that is, he survived the next few moments.

The people were very well armed; and they were the type of people who knew how to use their arms. One of them, a man with a wide, livid scar on his scalp who was clearly the leader of the bunch, stepped out of the circle.

"Sarevok Anchev, Bhaalspawn," he said, and Sarevok felt immediately extremely conspicuous in the capital of a land which he had attempted to involve in a war, "Aran Linvail, the Shadowmaster of Athkatla, invites you and your companion to a dinner, to discuss the events which took place today on Waukeen's Promenade; and also the circumstances concerning the assassination of Entar Silvershield, Duke of Baldur's Gate, five months ago. Will you go with us, or will you have to be taken?"

**End of Part I: The Opening.**


	6. II: Pawn to a Queen, 1

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**1**

Imoen was awakened from her exhausted, desperate slumber by the dull thud of Sarevok's body hitting the cell's stone floor. In spite of herself, she decided to check up on her brother; her jailors had refused to answer her questions, and Sarevok, perhaps, might shed some light on her current circumstance.

Once she actually saw the man up close in the dim light of the cell, she could not help gasping. It was not a great exaggeration to say that Sarevok's face was one large wound, covered as it was with the multitude of bruises, burns and lacerations. The clothes he was wearing—Irenicus' clothes, she remembered suddenly—were likewise torn, cut and dark with blood; and what flesh she could see was also livid-red and bleeding. But Sarevok's torturers knew their job; after months of imprisonment in Irenicus' mad playhouse, Imoen could recognise the work of a master. The man would live.

Sarevok opened his eyes, slowly and with visible effort. It was clear that his tormentors had not spared them during the beating; and, Imoen thought, if Sarevok had looked at them as he was wont to have done, with his usual arrogance, they must, indeed, have been a favourite target. Their golden glow was now dimmed, almost gone.

"Don—" Sarevok started to say, but, almost immediately, he was seized with a cough. He turned to the side and, carefully, spit out a bundle of blood and phlegm; and with them, a tooth. For a moment, he looked numbly at the small white object lying in the puddle of spittle; but soon, he gave up and put his head back on the cold floor. "Don't touch," he said, and even his voice was lifeless.

"I didn't mean to," Imoen replied, affronted. "You will live, you know."

She could see how the man's hazed eyes tried to focus on her. "Of course I will live," he replied slowly. "We have an invitation to dinner, after all."

"An invitation?" Imoen asked. "Is that how the guests are prepared? Or are we supposed to be the main course? You'd make for a fine steak as you are now, Sarevok."

In disbelief, she saw how the man's swollen lips tried to twist into a smile; Sarevok must have lost more of his self-control than either of them had guessed. "No," he said. "That was just entertainment."

"Entertainment?" Imoen pretended to take offence. "Why wasn't I invited?"

"Weren't you rather indisposed for talking at the time?" Sarevok asked matter-of-factly.

"Well—" Imoen started to explain the matter of the magic that had hit her, but quickly interrupted as Sarevok once again turned to the side and spit out saliva and blood. Then, he dragged himself gradually into a slouching position against the wall. When he was finished, he said suddenly, "Besides, after all, you know nothing."

"About the wizard, you mean?" Imoen probed.

A grimace of annoyance crossed Sarevok's disfigured face. "Yes. About the wizard. _Irenicus_, of course. You need not pretend ignorance, Imoen; you have it aplenty. They will know it when you lie."

"So I'm to tell all I know?! Also about the... Bhaalspawn thing?" Imoen asked, disbelieving and angry, and wondering why Sarevok had just said what he had said.

Sarevok made a feeble effort to shrug. "Of course. Since you aren't one, this will have no bearing on their plans towards you. 'Their', by the way, is 'the Shadow Thieves''. It's your fellows in trade who have quarrel with Irenicus."

"The Shadow Thieves of Athkatla," the girl added without missing a beat. "We're in Amn, aren't we?"

"Yes," Sarevok replied, and bent over to spit a bit more of the blood-red saliva, which gave Imoen a few more seconds to think. When he was done, she asked, quite innocently, "Wait. If you've already told them all that we know, and they know that it's all that we know, then why the beating?"

Sarevok's eyes recovered their golden glimmer for just the slightest moment. "As I said before," he said flatly, "that was just entertainment. The Shadow Thieves have long memories, if they want to."

And then, suddenly irritated, he said something else, a thing which made Imoen silently scream out in frustration; because, after all, it rendered the whole conversation futile:

"Now, can you please tell the fools who are listening on us that, unless they hurry up with the healing, they will soon be left with nothing to resurrect?"

And, having said that, Sarevok, quite unwittingly, fainted.

---

The two men ran into the cell even before Imoen had the time to say anything, thus proving the siblings' suspicion that their conversation had been listened upon. As she watched one of them chant a prayer she did not recognise, and later, the bluish-white light of healing envelop Sarevok, she thought of just what the Shadow Thieves might be planning for their prisoners. And, more important, whether she should play along with Sarevok's lie and not reveal that she was also a Bhaalspawn.

Because, if Sarevok didn't want the Thieves to know that she was a Bhaalspawn, then perhaps she should reveal the secret herself? But why should she want them to know? Perhaps they would protect her against Irenicus—they certainly didn't seem to be very fond of him, themselves—but perhaps they would kill them both, just so that Irenicus would not get them back? And in that case, it would be better not to admit to anything?

And what were the Thieves thinking of them now, after that conversation? After all, they knew that Sarevok and she knew that they had been overheard, so they must treat everything they heard with suspicion, so perhaps Sarevok had already told them that she was a Bhaalspawn, and only wanted her not to admit this, so that they wouldn't trust her? And then—

Lost in the maze of circuitous logic, she finally decided that, for now, she would keep the secret. There was always time to tell things later; but, once revealed, the secret, after all, would no longer be a secret. And if the Shadow Thieves already knew—

_No. Stop_, she told herself.

---

The armoured men healed Sarevok, and then they hoist him to his feet; one of them started to push him out of the cell, shoving him roughly to make him move. The other thug kicked Imoen.

"Stan' up, ye ugly bitch," he said, and Imoen bit her tongue to prevent some impractical comeback from escaping. "The Shadowmaster wants to see you."

But he did not take her to the Shadowmaster: instead, he left her in a small bathroom. There was water there, and soap, and a mirror, and all the other accoutrements; and also, a change of clothes: black hooded tunic and pants, both linen and trimmed with red.

She did not wonder at the stark contrast between the bathroom and the cell; after all, they had an invitation for dinner.

Instead, she approached the mirror. And, once there, she cried.

In part, her tears were because she saw how she looked now: below the layer of dust and grime, a large scar ran through one of her eyes; another cut through her chin and her left cheek, giving her face a lopsided look. Not healed properly at the proper time, these scars, she knew, would now never altogether smooth out.

Her hair, she saw, had not grown much longer—but then, Sarevok had not had much of a beard, either, she suddenly realised. But instead of being that pretty pink colour she had dyed it in Baldur's Gate, it had gone back to its original dull brown. That—or even worse than usual, because of how matted and lacklustre and tangled it now was. If she ever lived long enough to actually find herself on an ordinary street, she thought angrily, she would dye it again, even pinker and prettier. After getting herself that drink she had promised herself when she had learnt that she was a Bhaalspawn, that is.

But mostly, her tears were not tears of sadness, but tears of release: it was the first time in five months that she saw her own face, hidden as it was under the layers of grime and dust and under all the scars. It was good to see it. And she even looked the way she had imagined she looked in the times when she could not remember how she looked.

"Oy there! Hurry up!" she heard an uncouth female voice yell at her. So, they were watching her here as well. She supposed she should be grateful that her current warden was not a man.

She set to scrubbing the grime off her face.

---

To her amazement, they let her take as much time as she wanted in the bath; apparently, the Shadowmaster of Athkatla was a man who could wait for his prisoner to finish her grooming. But no sooner was she cleaned and clad in the new set of clothes than a woman appeared, eyeing her unpleasantly.

"Come," she ordered, and led Imoen through a dark, long corridor whose dimness, Imoen knew, simply must hid a multitude of traps; but, tired as the girl was after the eventful day, her wandering eyes could not spot any.

Finally, they reached a small antechamber, with a thick rug on the floor, thick tapestries on the walls, a statue standing in one corner and an enchanted light shining in another. They had gone far from the prison cell, this much was clear.

Sarevok was waiting for her there, wearing brown clothes, no armour and a frown. His eyes were shining again with the haughty golden glow as he scrutinised Imoen. He said nothing, and made no move towards her.

They had not healed his face.

It was clearly not an oversight: it could not be. If anything, she supposed, it was a reminder. A warning about the hand hidden in the glove.

The final door opened, and they were ushered in.

---

The chambers of Aran Linvail, the Shadowmaster of Athkatla, spoke of their master's power and influence. Decorated with tasteful luxury, keeping to warm, red-brown tones with the occasional gold-leaf or jewel adornment, they were suffused with a warm, dimmed light and a pleasant smell of myrrh.

The table in the further end of the room, Imoen noticed, was set for three; and in the nearer end, Aran Linvail stood, apparently alone. She wondered how many bodyguards were hidden in the shadows.

The Shadowmaster was a human, middle-aged, blond, blue-eyed, quite tall and rather handsome; and wearing, in his private chambers, an elven-made chain mail. Whether this was his usual habit or a precaution taken especially for the coming meeting, there was no telling. One thing, though, was certain: however she sought, Imoen could not detect on him any concealed weapons. Either they were concealed very well, indeed, or not there at all.

A small smile appeared on Linvail's face when he saw his captives; he spoke out and Imoen discovered that, in keeping with his fairly pleasant appearance, the man had a fairly pleasant voice.

"Sarevok!" he said, extending his right hand. "How long has it been?"

"Seven months," Sarevok replied casually, taking the hand and shaking it.

"Seven months," Aran Linvail repeated amiably, cupping Sarevok's hand with the left his own. "And then, two months after you come here, soliciting a Shadow Thief assassin to kill Entar Silvershield, what do I hear? That, after being refused, you engaged a pair of cheap goons to perform the deed and accuse the Thieves of it. And why? To begin a war, no less. After I have explicitly told you that while war is good for business in general, it is not good for _my_ business right _now_. Do you even realise the trouble you have caused me? I almost lost my position over that little squabble."

Imoen looked from the one man to the other and wondered whether she would survive long enough to actually eat something; for it was clear that, in spite of Aran's flippant tone, he was deadly serious. Sarevok must tread very carefully lest the Shadowmaster's patience end; and, from the look of his steeled, inscrutable eyes and his stiff, rigid posture, he was as aware of it as Imoen was.

"Still," Aran continued in his pleasant voice as his eyes swept over Sarevok's face in a way neither sibling could possibly fail to notice, "What is done is done, and beyond us. There's no quarrel between friends, is there?" he asked, slightly too indifferently this time. "You do understand why I had to do this?"

Imoen tensed; and then, relaxed as Sarevok replied calmly, "Yes, I do. There is no quarrel."

"Wonderful," Aran said, his tone now brisk and businesslike. "Now, if you would only introduce to me this charming young lady—?" And with that, he turned his attention to Imoen.

Sarevok turned to her as well, and the girl could sense a faint trace of amusement in his voice as he said, "This is Imoen, of Candlekeep. She belonged to the company of my dear dwarven sibling."

"Dwarven sibling? Irene, you mean? That brave young woman who became the hero of the whole Sword Coast before she disappeared under Baldur's Gate chasing after you? The one who almost single-handedly prevented the war you were trying to instigate? My dear girl," Aran bowed his head slightly, "I salute you your friend's and your resolve. I take it that she is dead? If so, accept my sincere condolences."

And, to Imoen's amazement, the Shadowmaster did sound honest when he said so; still, she replied cautiously, "If they are sincere, I accept them."

"They are," Aran replied matter-of-factly, and Imoen found again that she wanted to believe the man. "But do not take them if you do not want them; this must still be a fresh matter for you. Now," he said, now turning to the both of them, "let us eat, and you will both have to tell me all that you know about that wizard."

---

Not much was eaten that night; not because the Shadowmaster wasn't hungry and his guests could not eat much lest their starved stomachs reject the rich, luxurious food; but because much was spoken and much was talked about.

They started from Irenicus: from his name, and his dungeons, and his interest in the Bhaalspawn, and his use of torture to draw out the Bhaalspawn's powers; during which, it was silently assumed that Imoen had been merely one of the demonstration specimens who, by pure chance, survived long enough; and at which the Shadowmaster grew pensive and said that now he may have finally understood something, a thing neither sibling asked what it might be.

But, in the end, the topic was abandoned quickly, and the conversation moved on, to matters less personal and more agreeable: to Aldeth Sashenstar-Silvershield, the man who had married the richest heiress in Baldur's Gate, adopted her name and became the next Duke in her father Entar's place; to Amn and the trouble brewing in the south-east with the encroachment of the Sythsillian Empire; to Maztica, and the competition between Amn and Waterdeep in the colonies; to Riatavin, and Sembia, and Cormyr, and Tethyr. In all these matters, their host was well-versed, gracious, politic and flawless; and Sarevok, in spite of five months' gap in knowledge, could well hold his own against the Shadowmaster; now inquiring for a piece of recent information, now inputting a remark which showed a more than superficial interest and understanding of the topics.

It was fascinating, Imoen thought as she watched the two men discuss in the graceful, amiable atmosphere of the dinner matters of state and matters of trade and economy. She had never associated being a thief with being a statesman; yet it was clear that here, in Aran Linvail's chambers, much of Amn's foreign and internal policy was decided; and perhaps not of Amn only. The man must hold as much power as any Duke of Baldur's Gate.

She even took some interest in the matters discussed, trying to connect the scraps of knowledge the monks in Candlekeep had managed to impress in her with what she was now hearing. But it was always woefully little; and so—by no means forgotten, because her host took care to include her in the conversation; something which Sarevok always watched with eyes half-amused and half-irritated—in the end, she remained an unequal witness to that conversation between the two equal partners. And the conversation flowed and ebbed, effortlessly moving from topic to topic in that dim, warm light of the enchanted lamps, that sweet, intoxicating smell of myrrh and to the tune of sweet, clear sounds of an enchanted harp playing by itself in one corner of the chamber. Imoen had never imagined what her first meal in freedom would look like; but if she had, it would certainly not be this. A greasy plate somewhere in a cheap, seedy tavern, perhaps; but certainly not this, not this easy civility of luxury.

At some point; Imoen could not herself decide when it happened—she became aware of a new undercurrent in the conversation. Something was there—something not yet fully defined, yet palpable already: in the inclination of voices perhaps; or in the posture of the bodies; or in the looks in the eyes. She started to watch the two men closer; and then closer still; saw a mutual offer mutely extended and mutely accepted; and finally, understood how much of an unwanted guest had she become by this point at this table.

And so, she yawned demonstratively, and stood up from her place. "Thank you, Master Linvail," she said; because the man had never told her that she might call him Aran, and because he _was_ the Shadowmaster of Athkatla. "It was very good, all, and the conversation was very interesting... But I'd like to go to sleep now...?"

She ended up hesitating, because she thought that, given the meal, her thanks could have merited from some refinement and improvement; but her host did not take offence. "Of course, Imoen," he said, looking at her and rising swiftly to his feet. "I understand; after all you have endured, it is only reasonable. In fact, I feel I should apologise for my negligence. Allow me show you to my private guest chambers."

She was shown to the guest chambers, a small suite with a soft, massive bed and a petite private bathroom; and, having performed only the barest necessary washing, she sank into a dreamless sleep to the sound of men's voices and men's laughter.

There was no question where Sarevok would be spending the night.

---

That night, another meeting took place in the graveyard of Athkatla. A tall man with eyes blue as ice shards was pacing irritated between the graves and crypts of the city's dead nobility.

"_Ten minutes!_" he was saying. _"Ten minutes! _It was all that took to dispose of those meddlesome fools. I left the Children for _ten minutes_, and it was enough for them to disappear!"

The woman, stretched lazily on top of one of the tombs, laughed. "Relax, dear brother! Do you know how much you sound like an overwrought parent?"

Having thus captured the man's attention, she continued, "My spies have told me that the Children have been taken by our friend Aran's people. The situation is not... irretrievable." She rolled out the last word languidly, with obvious pleasure.

The man stopped his pacing and looked at her. "Not irretrievable? Of course not. But unreasonably delayed. The laboratory is destroyed. It will take time to rebuild it."

"You will not rebuild it." The woman's cold voice cut through the air like a whip. "They have already started excavating it. If you appear now in public, you will alarm the quarry."

"Then what do you advise, sister?" The man's voice was now as gelid as his sister's.

"Build another one. Away from here. I will lead the Children to you. We can afford a few months' delay."

"Yes," the man replied contemplatively, folding his arms. "I believe I even know an adequate spot."

---

Imoen awoke to a start within a sea of white softness. For a moment, she could not remember where she was; and then, at last, she did. So it wasn't dream, after all; she was free! As free as the Shadow Thieves would let her be, at least.

She looked around the small bedroom. It was quite pretty, she decided, not aware that with this word she had summed up the equivalent of Athkatla's yearly income. Refreshed and perky, she set out to cleaning herself, and then eating the food which some kind soul had left on the nightstand by the bed; and then, finally, dressing in the set of clothes, identical to those she had yesternight fallen into sleep in.

Then, carefully, she opened the door to the main room, and peeked out.

There was a heap of things lying on the table where, last night, the dinner had been spread: potions, all piled in a small box. A tube filled with scrolls. A small bag which, she knew, would carry gems within. Khalid's helmet, and, next to it, Irene's amulet.

Sarevok was standing in the corner in the room, touching tentatively the strings of the enchanted harp, now silent.

"If now you tell me that you can also play the harp, I think I will scream," Imoen announced, and was gratified by the sight of the man's surprise as he went stiff and rigid for just the slightest moment. He had not heard her come in, it seemed.

But the moment passed; Sarevok relaxed and turned around slowly to face her. His face was now healed; completely smooth but for those scars which would never fully heal. And unlike her, he was now wearing not linen, but white silk; embroidered in the Eastern fashion with golden dragons. It suited him. Moreover: it _fit_ him.

"No," he replied simply, and for a moment, she wondered to which part of her statement he was replying. But she quickly stopped thinking about it, because Sarevok, gesturing to the table, said, "Here. I have taken the liberty to retain the chain mail and my sword; apart from them, everything is there; a fair share, I believe. You may keep your clothes, and, if you wish to trade, the fence in the compound is aware that you were a guest and will give you a good price. I wish you good travels and a long enough life; I suggest that an elementary measure to effect this is to ensure that we do not meet again."

Imoen blinked several times as she processed the sudden barrage of information. "And that's _it_?" she asked disbelievingly when the torrent of words ended. "We're... parting? Just like that?"

Sarevok did not sound amused when he replied, "Forgive me. I seemed to have laboured under the misapprehension that this is what you wanted. A clear cut."

Imoen grimaced. "Of course, but..."

She blinked again. Inside, she was surprised, confused, and more than a little angry; and growing angrier as her feelings clarified. So, Sarevok was staying here, in this safety and cosiness, in this _comfort_, having fallen like a cat on his feet, as always—and she, having done her job, was being dismissed like some broken toy, some _servant_, thrown out onto the street of an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar country, among people who were total strangers, with barely any money—these clothes he was wearing were worth more than everything he was letting her have! It was just so... _typical_. _And_ he had nestled himself among thieves. _She_ was the thief between the two of them!

Sarevok was watching her coldly, as if he could tell precisely every single thought Imoen was now thinking, and guess every detail which now crossed her mind; he spoke not a word. A sudden suspicion overtook the girl, and she simply had to speak it out; it burst out, chaotic and muddled, but, like her previous sentiment, getting stronger and surer as she was saying the words aloud:

"You were _planning_ this! You were planning this _all the time_! That's why you didn't want me to tell anyone... You didn't want anyone to know that I'm a Bhaalspawn, because you wanted Aran to think that you're so unique, so that you could have all his interest, so that..." _So that you could manipulate the Shadow Thieves for your own goals the way you manipulated the Iron Throne_, she wanted to say; but suddenly the words stuck in her throat. So, it had been that simple. So, after all, it had been all that simple...

Instead, she asked, throatily and bitterly, "Where is Aran? Master Linvail, I mean?"

At this, Sarevok laughed. "He's gone; left to pay the necessary bribes to have his workers hired to dig under the Promenade. Apparently, the disturbance we caused was powerful enough that he need personally appeal to smooth out ruffled bureaucratic feathers. But tell me—so, you are going to tell him all about my nefarious plans to control him? Do you _really_ think that he does not know?"

And, as Imoen's face started to alter in accord with her deteriorating mood, Sarevok added, not unkindly, "Believe me, Aran Linvail needs no protection of yours. Though, I daresay," her brother finished dryly, "he might find you amusing."

Imoen looked at him furiously, her anger now flaring up again. _"Amusing?!"_

Sarevok was watching her indolently. "Very well," he said equably. "Tell me: when you inform Aran of my attempt to become the grey eminence behind his throne, what will you do _then_? Take my place in Aran's bedchambers? If so, you have the road laid out for you: he was not particularly averse to the idea himself yesterday... Certainly, not after he had gotten drunk enough."

Imoen gasped. She felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach.

Recoiling, she retorted, "_You_ tell _me_, Sarevok: how does it feel for the proud Son of Murder to be whoring his way to power through another man's bed?"

There was a cruel smile now on Sarevok's lips as he said, "There is a price to be paid for being a Bhaalspawn and a known outlaw, _thief_. But, I believe, it is you who has now misapprehended: my current status is far from displeasing to me. Aran—" Suddenly, he fell silent.

"Aran?" Imoen demanded, curious what the next words would be.

"Is here," Sarevok capped her smoothly, and Imoen, red-cheeked from anger, whirled around to see the Shadowmaster in the entrance to the suite. She wondered how much he had heard, and how he could have construed, and misconstrued, the conversation.

"I seem to have arrived in the middle of some... disagreement?" he asked.

"Yes," Sarevok replied lazily, now again the image of absolute self-control. "Believe it or not, Aran, I have forgotten to mention to you that this stray I have picked up is, in fact, a thief. A rather good one, at that. Proficient with locks and traps, if slightly clumsy in her killing. You would not have a job for her, perhaps?"

The older man sized Imoen up and down, and suddenly she understood Sarevok's opinion of him: under the Shadowmaster's gaze, she felt not as a human being, and certainly no longer as a welcome guest; but, at most, as goods sold and bought.

"Any thief operating within the city of Athkatla can do so only with the Shadow Thieves' approval, Imoen," he said at length. "Whether you want merely that, or whether you want to join one of our guilds, you must find Renal Bloodscalp—the one who intercepted you in the Promenade; a first-class enforcer," he added, casting a knowing look at Sarevok before returning to Imoen. "Renal will tell you what you will be allowed to do."

"Yeah, I'll guess I'll do so," Imoen said, having suddenly acquired the feeling that she was at the same time released from the measuring gaze and being irrevocably dismissed. "Thank you, Master Linvail. For the advice, and for letting me stay here for the night."

"That was my pleasure only," Aran replied, smiling his bright, intelligent smile.

And so, having picked up her things, Imoen left Aran Linvail's rooms to seek her fortune in the world outside; leaving behind her brother, laughing lightly at some small joke the Shadowmaster had just now chosen to share with him.


	7. II: Pawn to a Queen, 2

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**2**

The pretty pink-haired girl entered the shop sitting squarely on the border between the Government and Temple Districts of Athkatla slightly hesitantly, as if she weren't certain this was really the place she was searching for.

However, once in the shop, all her indecision vanished. She approached the fat shopkeeper briskly, smiled and said, "Hi!"

"Hello, miss," Gorch said, returning the smile and internally sighing. A _customer_. _Here_. "How can I help you?"

The girl smiled again, this time even wider. "I'm looking for somebody called Mae'Var," she said, and Gorch, blinking, did a double take.

The girl was not wearing any armour, and had no weapon except for a small, childishly looking dagger at her belt; and in spite of the two nasty scars on her face, she did not really look like someone who could use it well—or, indeed, at all. Her clothes were black, trimmed with red and made of obviously high-quality material; there was an amulet half-hidden under the collar of the shirt. There was a small gem bag hanging next to the dagger, and a rather larger bag on the girl's back, with a tube full of scrolls sticking out of it. There was only one sensible conclusion which Gorch could produce from this picture.

"Yer a wizard?" he asked, dropping the high-class accent in which he spoke to the customers. Then, because in fact the girl didn't interest him in the slightest and all he wished was to return to his peaceful slumber, he added, "No matter. Mae'Var's out, so ye won' talk ter him now. Bu' Edwin's on top, secon' floor. Ye can talk ter him... If ye 'ave the papers, tha' is," he added, seeing that the girl was about to cheerfully walk into the second largest thieves' guild in Athkatla completely unchecked.

The girl looked at him sheepishly and, after rummaging for a moment in the bag on her back, produced the necessary documentation. Apparently, she was a new arrival to Athkatla, and her talents were, so far, completely unverified.

Gorch shrugged and waved her in. His job was done; the girl was someone else's problem now.

---

Imoen found a flight of stairs which took her to the first and then to the second floor of the guild's building. She could feel eyes watching her as she went on; but no one approached her from the shadows, and so, she did not approach anyone, either.

Athkatla was, she had been told, divided by the thieves into three territories. The south-west area, with the docks, where all the ships coming to Athkatla with their rich cargo were unloaded, and Waukeen's Promenade, where the majority of the city's legal trade took place, was Aran Linvail's personal demesne, administered in his lieu by Renal Bloodscalp. The south-east, with the slums, the city gates and the bridge area—the havens of illegal entertainment—was Gaelan Bayle's; and the north, with the rich Government and Temple Districts, was Mae'Var's. Here, the majority of income came from three sources: first, the rich, unwary tourists who came to settle their matters with the government and the gods; second, money paid by the rich nobles to secure their mansions against burglary; and finally, the most important: the assassination contracts.

These always ultimately had to be approved by the Shadowmaster himself; but it rarely occurred that Linvail did not agree to Mae'Var's recommendation. The master of the northern guild was cunning and powerful; and, it was rumoured, constantly plotting to achieve even more power. In fact, he had very nearly supplanted Aran Linvail five months before, when the Shadow Thieves had almost become implicated in the war between Amn and Baldur's Gate.

That said, such rumours accompany all ambitious men in positions of power; and certainly, once that opportunity to ascend in the ranks had been lost, Mae'Var had returned to the role of a dutiful lieutenant.

---

Imoen came up the last flight of stairs, surfaced into the bright light of the guild's second floor, and stopped in her tracks.

Everywhere—and it was barely a hyperbole: on the floor, on a pair of massive tables, on each of the three high shelves standing in the room—there were lying books, stacks of papers and rolls of parchment: all neatly arranged with a precision bordering, if not far into, obsessive compulsion. On a third table, ordered by size, there were two rows of small glass flasks which immediately evoked very unpleasant memories in Imoen's mind; they, and the plethora of objects on the last high shelf. These must be the odds and ends which evidently could not be arranged otherwise and, undoubtedly with a reluctant sigh, had been all gathered here so as not to disturb the empyreal harmony of the rest of the room with their unruly messiness; still, Imoen had never seen a human skull put away so _neatly_.

It was certainly not the type of room one expected to find in a thieves' guild, even after learning how much of the Shadow Thieves' functioning depended on bureaucracy. (The guild was remarkably similar to any other business in this regard, Imoen thought.) It was, in short, a wizard's room; and, after a brief spell of fighting the sudden urge to escape, Imoen set to searching for the wizard.

She was about to call out when the wizard found _her_. She heard a small, quickly stifled, scream of surprise behind her, followed quickly by some enraged muttering:

"(Can't those thieving simians learn to walk a little LOUDER? One of these days, they will give me a heart attack, they will.)"

She turned around to face the speaker. The wizard was short, bearded, dressed in red and—a detail Imoen found so impractical that it was almost ridiculous—possessed of a nose ring. She was about to reply when the man raised his voice and asked, in a nasal, high-pitched voice, "Yes? What do you want?"

"Um," Imoen started. "The man at the door—he told me to find you, because Mae'Var isn't here."

The wizard sized her up and down, and lied, "Yes, I _thought_ I haven't seen you monkey here before. Still, obviously that is no excuse for taking my time. You should have applied to Zyntris or Anishai."

"I didn't know that," Imoen retorted. "The man told me to come here."

"_Here_?" The man's voice couldn't possibly sound more high-pitched and annoyed.

"Yes... He thought that I was a wizard, you see," Imoen explained.

The man sized her up and down again; for a moment, his eyes lingered on her breasts, and she felt slightly queasy. "Are you?" he asked acerbically.

Imoen laughed. "Me? Nah."

"But you are wearing a metaspell amulet," the man retorted in a voice brooking no disagreement. "The aura is unmistakable."

Imoen's hand shot to the hidden necklace of its own accord. "It was my—friend's," she explained, hoping that the brief pause escaped unnoticed; from the way the wizard's eyes narrowed, there was no chance of that happening. To cover up the mishap, she added, "Me, I could at most shoot out a magic missile or two, if I really had to, I think. Or, at least, I once knew how to. I started to learn, anyway," she continued, increasingly aware that she was blabbering.

The man was watching her oddly. "You started to learn," he repeated slowly.

"Yeah. Except that it got boring, so I stopped," Imoen replied honestly, feeling the need to explain.

The man's face twisted into a rather interesting grimace. "You simians certainly do have a peculiar attitude towards the most majestic of arts," he snorted. "Tell me, have you perchance ever reconsidered that opinion? (No, she wouldn't... Would she? _Would_ she?)"

The muttering caught Imoen's attention. "Just what are you driving at, here?" she asked suspiciously.

The man looked down on her. "What I, Edwin Odesseiron of Thay, have in mind, is an opportunity for you to correct your childish error in judgment."

Imoen could not believe the testimony of her own ears. "Become your apprentice, you mean?" she asked, at the same time combining the multitude of small details of the man's accent and looks into one picture: a Thayvian's.

"Yes, yes, that_ too_," the wizard replied dismissively, waving a hand about, as if trying to fend off an unpleasant fly. His fingernails were long and meticulously manicured, Imoen noticed.

"And what would a Thayvian Red Wizard need an apprentice for?" she asked, adamantly impervious to the man's histrionics.

"Why should you ask? It is not that I cannot deal with the multitude of tasks set upon me in this miserable place—" Imoen nodded, biting her lip to restrain herself from laughing. "But these minor errands simply take too much of my time, thus detracting me from my _true_ undertaking. (Why can't she just say _yes_?)"

"So, you expect me to slave for you, and, in return, you'll throw me scraps of knowledge and call me a simian," Imoen summed up. "No deal." She had had far too much of that kind of treatment recently to willingly ask for more from this buffoon. Even if she wanted to study magic. Which, incidentally, she did not.

The man, now clearly offended, hissed out, "If you think that Edwin Odesseiron has nothing to offer except _scraps_ of knowledge, then obviously you are obtuse enough not to be able to appreciate his teachings properly! (Ungrateful simian. What did I see in her? She shows no promise, obviously.)"

Imoen caught the last words as she was already descending down the stairs; on hearing them, she stopped in her tracks. "You really meant that?" she asked. "You would teach me properly?"

"Yes!" the man replied annoyed. "I _told_ you: my current duties aren't equal to me. To put it simply for your uncomplicated mind, they _bore_ me. An apprentice, on the other hand, might find them challenging. And you're the first one with the slightest potential to have ever appeared here." Now, he was almost whining.

Imoen frowned, considering the unexpected development. To gain time, she asked, "What is a wizard doing in a thieves' guild, anyway? I thought you people had your own organisation in Amn—?"

Odesseiron looked at her haughtily. "And why should Edwin Odesseiron wish to ally himself with any backwater officialdom?"

Imoen decided that the man must be in Amn on some secret spying mission; and almost instantly withdrew this opinion. Perhaps he just liked it here. There was no need to be suspicious of _everyone_ just because she had just spent a day escaping a madman's dungeon with a psychotic murderer who had enjoyed toying with her mind. There were people who were not constantly plotting out there. Somewhere, anyway. There must be. And wasn't _she_ a fine one to talk about plotting?

Suddenly, she decided that she would like to hear more about this apprenticeship the man was talking about.

"Well," she said, returning to the top-floor room and, after carefully making way around the stacks of papers, seating herself on a chair that miraculously happened to be still free. "Tell me about that job you'd have for me, Edwin Odesseiron of Thay."

---

The job did sound interesting—at least in theory: she was not naive enough to think that it would not entail a lot of backbreaking work—and certainly it sounded like nothing Imoen had ever done before: mixing potions and poisons, scribing spells onto scrolls, enchanting objects and, occasionally, going on missions to assist the thieves. Edwin promised her that he would teach her how to cast the spells; or, at least, the basics of the trade; later, he explained, every wizard developed his or her own technique. She would do this whenever she would not be out of the guild on her thief business, he said, if she was accepted into the guild, that is; and, within a month, he would make of her a competent spell-caster.

"...of course, you will never reach the efficiency of a true wizard," he finished. "But the minor cantrips are easy enough to comprehend even for one without a proper Thayvian education."

She decided not to tell him that she had had a lot of proper education in Candlekeep, which she had uniformly hated; and that she might not be in Athkatla a month from now.

"There are empty rooms down the corridor," Edwin was saying. "Pick whichever one suits you. (They all smell.) Most thieves don't live in the building," he explained, evidently noticing the surprise on her face, "only those who are set to Mae'Var's personal bodyguard. And Anishai and Zyntris, of course. You should still see the both of them as soon as you are settled in, by the way."

"Thanks," Imoen said, smiling. "I'll do so. And, by the way... I'm Imoen."

---

She put her head on the roll of material which served as a pillow, and started to think.

Of all her things, she had sold only Sarevok's ring—and of _that_, she had let go with great satisfaction. It had, by far, paid for a drink, a visit to a barber's, and a tithe to a priest of Kelemvor she had met when, in her traipsing through Athkatla, she had stumbled across a small cemetery located against all laws of hygiene squarely in the middle of the city. She felt badly that this was the only memorial ceremony she might afford for Irene and the others; but she didn't quite know what else she might do. The elves had their own gods, whose temples were only in their own cities; Jaheira had worshipped Silvanus, and when Imoen met some druids, she would ask them for a word for the half-elf; but Khalid she had never asked what god he had followed—and Irene? Irene? What god might wish to take care of the memory of a dead Bhaalspawn?

So, so far she had her gems, and Khalid's helmet, of course; but these all would, in her best estimate, still barely pay for a decent bow, sword and, possibly, armour. And she had absolutely no idea what she would do later.

The previous time, the party had just... accumulated. Khalid and Jaheira had taken care of two lost girls; then, two elves had joined them, and, all united by a common goal, they had moved from a place to a place, following the trail of Sarevok and the Iron Throne. Now... she was alone. She might wish to find an adventuring party, but she didn't even know where to search for such people in Athkatla. In an inn, she supposed; but beyond that, she had no idea. And she did not even know _if_ she wanted to be an adventurer.

That was, ultimately, why, directionless, she had accepted Renal Bloodscalp's offer. And got herself this strange apprenticeship with Edwin Odesseiron. If she were successful in being accepted into Mae'Var's guild, that is.

Magic _had_ been boring once; of course, it had long stopped being so. Instead, it grew repulsive, stomach-turning, and associated with all the worst memories of her life; and, if she allowed it to remain so, it would mean that Irenicus had won. She must remember that it was only a tool, a tool like any other, and that Irene had been a wizard, too.

Irenicus... Yes, deny it as she might, he, too, was there; hovering constantly somewhere at the edge of her consciousness. He, and Bhaal. And Sarevok.

---

She left her room, and descended to the first floor of the building, where, in a small, unmemorable room, she had a small interview with Anishai and Zyntris.

Zyntris, as it turned out, was the senior cutpurse of the guild: a short, lean, nervous-looking man, he was responsible for the guild's pickpockets and burglars. Anishai, a tall, cool-looking woman, was apparently the leader of Mae'Var's assassins. She remained on the side, watching silently as the man spoke:

"Well, girl, it be yer lucky day. Tonight, Kretor and me'd be doin' a nice li'l job in the All-Seein' Eye's own temple. A customer desp'ratly wants the new Sarles there on display, an' we're all set to help here." He laughed. "Ye'll do it with me instead. We'll see how ye do."

Imoen blinked. "We're robbing the _Temple of Helm_?"

"Wha'? Not up fer the job, are ye?" the man laughed again.

Imoen, whose leaky memory had just supplied the fact that, as a matter of fact, she had already had a fairly successful career of robbing temples, answered briskly, "No. Why not?" and smiled.

This was thieving stuff. What she had always enjoyed. Fun. Right. _Right?_

---

"They want you to steal the _Sarles_?" she heard in the background the nasal, high-pitched voice of the wizard. "The _new_ Sarles? The _Amnish Falcon_? (The _imbeciles_. Losing me my apprentice even before she settles in.)"

"Yeah. What's wrong about that?" Imoen asked. She was still contemplating the 'Temple of Helm' part of the night's assignment.

"Oh, nothing," she heard in reply. "Except that it's near two hundred pounds of pure illithium ore. (The good thing here, I suppose, being that you can't possibly mistake it for anything else.)"

As Imoen, slack-jawed, looked at the wizard and assured herself that he wasn't joking, she heard an exasperated sigh. "Look, this is not as much of a problem as you might think. Illithium is dense, so the statue is really more of a statuette; and, if Zyntris doesn't give you a strength potion, I'll whip up one quickly for you. (And she'd better use it well. It is not often that Edwin—)"

"I have a question," Imoen asked suddenly, breaking through the stream of muttering. "Where is the Temple of Helm?"

---

In the end, Edwin, incessantly mumbling about losing precious time better spent studying important scrolls, took her on a walk around the richer districts of Athkatla which jointly comprised Mae'Var's territory. Imoen saw the government buildings; the rich mansions of the nobles, watched over by guards and, habitually, paying off the thieves to avoid burglary; finally, the magnificent temples of the gods. She plotted in her mind several easy routes between the guild building and the Temple District, looked around the main hall of the Temple of Helm, identified the major traps set around the temple's art display under the guise of appreciating the sculptures, and finally made a quick mental note of the equipment she would use to lift the Falcon from its current resting place if she were the one planning the heist.

By all rights, she ought to have at least one night of advance preparation, so that she might also assess the night rotation of guards around the temple; but she had not asked for it when she had first been assigned to accompany on the task, and she certainly would not ask for it now. She would make do with what she had, and hope that Zyntris would not call her on that point.

When she was done, she asked Edwin to take her to a tavern, where they ate a light meal together; the wizard slowly ceasing his muttering and actually becoming interested in the coming heist; and then, they returned to the guild, where Imoen went to her room for a quick nap before the night's job.

---

The All-Seeing Eye never sleeps; unfortunately, his priests are, for the major part, human and fallible. And of all, the most difficult hour to endure awake is that some four hours before the coming of dawn, when the human body cleanses itself in expectation of the coming day. 

That was why the two acolytes assigned to watch over the temple during the shift were hugging themselves against cold and chatting frantically about almost random topics; for it simply does not behove a priest of Helm to fall asleep while on duty. And that was why, try as they might, their senses were still dulled; their resolve, great as it was, enough to win the battle against their biology and the boredom of the eventless night—but only barely so.

That was why they did not notice in time the newcomers to the temple: and so, the two swift-footed figures appeared right behind them, shedding their invisibility only as they knocked the acolytes out with their clubs. The unconscious bodies were quickly caught and helped slide gently to the ground; later, each man was jabbed on his arm with a dart covered with a dose of Edwin Odesseiron's finest soporific. The men's slumbering blood flow would spread the sleep-inducing potion through their bodies, and prevent either of them from waking before the thieves were finished.

Having dealt thus with the guards inside the temple, Imoen and Zyntris moved without speaking a word to the Sarles statuette. The wizard had been correct when he had said that the Falcon was quite small for its weight: the irregular lump of metal (for, in fact, a typical representative of the recent Sarles, all the statue had in common with a real falcon was its name) measured no more than some twenty centimetres in each direction.

Still silent, Zyntris nodded to Imoen; and the girl began the demonstration of her skill.

First trap: invoking some unpleasant magic effect on the unwary, most probably some sort of a dire charm or domination; the priests would want to have the thief alive, after all. Second trap: the same, repeated, designed to catch the unwary and the arrogant who had dealt with the first trap-layer. Third trap: magic again, this time designed to hold the victim; fourth trap: for a change, a material one, a spike with a sleep-inducing potion. Then, the lock itself; the case carefully taken off and put down on the ground—

And then, finally, the pressure plate. To this, there was no remedy: it would take putting both acolytes on a plate twenty centimetres by twenty centimetres large to balance for the loss. Imoen looked to Zyntris to check that the man really had no solution to this problem, some clever piece of magic she could not have prepared herself in the scarce time she had had but which he might have had the foresight to fetch; but the senior thief only gestured for her to continue. Apparently, they would simply have to take the Falcon and _run_.

Imoen rolled her eyes, drank Edwin's special strength potion and put the piece of grey, nondescript cloth they _had_ brought with them on the statuette to cover it as best she could without actually lifting it; an oil of speed later, Zyntris and she were running out from the temple, the alarm sounding loudly behind them.

The guards in front of the temple chased them for a street or two before giving up; by which time the two thieves were almost back in the building of Mae'Var's guild.

Imoen carefully put down the Falcon statuette on the floor, threw a scathing look at Zyntris even as the senior thief was congratulating her on a good job done well, and repaired to her room to recover the lost hours of sleep. The success of the mission had improved her humour slightly; but she could not help thinking that there had been one or two things Zyntris could have done to reduce the risk involved. The pressure plate... Especially _that_.

---

"Wake up!" Even muffled by the door, the wizard's voice sounded nervous and worried. "Mae'Var wants to see you! (I swear, this deal gets worse by the minute. Now I am being held responsible for—)"

"Um. Yeah. What?" The sleepy, tousled, pink-haired head appeared in the door, followed by the rest of Imoen. "Can you repeat that?"

The wizard frowned. "I _said_," he said in a voice which left no doubt that he was now talking to an imbecile, or possibly an imbecilic simian, "that Mae'Var is downstairs and wants to see you. Do you _really_ have nothing to wear?" he implored.

Imoen, whose red-trimmed black clothes had become utterly wrinkled by the night of sleeping in them, shook her head. "Nah," she said, yawning. "There was no sense in buying anything before I got accepted into the guild, see?"

"Oh, you _will_ be accepted," Edwin replied darkly. "Zyntris won't stop singing praises of you. (But she'd better not back off—)"

Imoen looked at him more clearly; then, she shook her head, blinked and tried again. "Nah," she said. "Don't you worry. I told ya I'd be apprenticing to you when I could."

"Yes, but—" Edwin protested; but then, evidently thinking better of it, grabbed the girl by the arm and, puling her out of her room, said, "Later. You'd better not keep Mae'Var waiting."

"Wait. Let me just pull on my boots!"

---

Mae'Var, as it turned out, was not young. In fact, he was closer to fifty than forty, scarred, grey-haired and, as it soon turned out, no-nonsense. Imoen's memory produced a name: Scar. She wondered for a moment to whom it belonged; she had no recollection of such a person.

Mae'Var threw a dagger at her the moment she was coming down the stairs. (Edwin, who, the girl later realised, must be aware of the old thief's tricks, stayed in safe distance behind her.)

Imoen, still sleepy after the broken night and the later overlong sleep, did not dodge the dagger. Instead, she caught it.

Her head cleared instantly, she held the dagger for a moment, watching it dubiously. Then, deciding that, all in all, it had been a nice trick, and that no one need really know that she did not catch daggers as a matter of course, she smiled at the three figures in the room, and said, "Someone lost this?"

At which point, Zyntris let off a massive, hearty laugh. "My girl, tha' is."

"This is for me to decide, Zyntris," the man who must be Mae'Var said. "Anishai still has a right to lay a claim. But even if she does not," he turned to Imoen, "you can certainly consider yourself employed. We're not letting go of talent here... Imoen, is it?"

"Yes," Imoen replied.

A grimace passed through Mae'Var's face; however, it disappeared quickly as the man turned to his two deputies. "News," he said curtly. "First. The Falcon is to be returned."

"_Returned_?" two disconsolate voices asked in chorus. Imoen realised that one of the voices was hers; the other, unsurprisingly, belonged to Zyntris.

Mae'Var cast a cold look at the man. "Yes. The Shadowmaster's orders. From now on, we play nice with the temples and the paladins. No stealing from the pilgrims—_or_ the gods. The Falcon will be returned, and you will deal with this personally, Zyntris."

The guild-master made a brief pause, which Imoen filled with the contemplation of what the orders _really_ meant; she was sure she was not the only one. After a moment, Mae'Var continued:

"Anishai," he turned to the woman. "Meet Anarg and... explain to him that, profitable as our association used to be, it is being dissolved this instant. I suggest that you take... Imoen... with you for the meeting. That is all for now. By the way," he added casually, "the dagger is mine."

For the slightest moment, Imoen found herself considering throwing the dagger at the man, just to see if _he_ would dodge it in time, perhaps. Then, she shook her head. _What am I thinking?_

The meeting with Anarg, Anishai told her when Imoen returned the dagger and Mae'Var, tagged by Zyntris asking for explanation why he was to let such an important contract left unfulfilled, left the room, would be later that day, around sunset. The rest of the day, Imoen had for herself.

She spent it re-learning how to cast a magic missile and buying herself a change of clothes, a spell-book and assorted bits and bobs on Waukeen's Promenade; the place she recognised as the spot where Irenicus' laboratory and his battle with the Cowled Wizards and the Shadow Thieves had been. Edwin had not been present during the fight, he said; but this brought to his mind an important detail he had forgotten to tell Imoen before: he may teach her magic, but, unless she bought a license, she had better not cast it on the streets. (That was why he would teach her under a roof. Simians.)

They ate another dinner together, discussing—softly, so as not to be heard by any outsider—Mae'Var's, or, better said, Aran Linvail's, pecuiar orders. By now, Imoen silently partook in the opinion that it was Sarevok's influence being felt; but, as a newcomer to the guild could not possibly know of Sarevok's influence, or, indeed, his existence, she kept that opinion to herself. She wondered, however, how long it would take Aran Linvail to share Rieltar Anchev's eventual fate.

---

The assassin Anishai gave her an armour, graphite-grey and enchanted to help its wearer hide in shadows; and, followed by an escort of three others, the two thieves plunged into the labyrinth of streets and lanes which criss-crossed the northern bank of the river flowing through Athkatla.

"Anarg and his people are all former paladins," Anishai explained; laughing unpleasantly, she added, "They have all certainly fallen low from their lofty perch, though! Still," she continued, now serious again and casting an approving look at Imoen's newly acquired short sword and her old dagger, "they _can_ fight, and fight well. I do not expect any trouble—they know who rules the city; but be prepared. Anarg can be... impetuous."

Imoen digested the information. A trained paladin—or worse yet, a group of them—would, certainly, be a dangerous enemy, especially if he came to the meeting armoured. Slow and sluggish, certainly; but strong and well-protected by the metal plates. The best spots to strike would be—

A group of six men approached her and Anishai; they were all wearing plate armour, and Imoen's eyes darted to the shadows to assure her that their bow-wielding escort were all positioned in their places. She did not notice anything.

"Anishai," the man in front, indistinguishable from the others under the helmets they all wore (she must strike in the narrow gap between the helmet and the breast armour, Imoen thought) said in a pleasant baritone voice containing just the slightest note of threat. "Why did you call for this meeting? I thought—"

"The circumstances have changed, Anarg," the assassin interrupted. "I'm sorry, but my orders are to tell you that you are not allowed to continue your current line of business now in this city."

"_What_?" The armoured man was now clearly confused.

Anishai continued in her cool voice, "Our cooperation is over; and, of course, the Thieves cannot allow you to act without our supervision. Therefore, you are to cease and desist your current activity, and, preferably, leave Athkatla altogether."

_He's not gonna like it_, Imoen thought, forcefully preventing herself from reaching for the weapon just yet.

The man did not like it. "If you think that I will let—"

"Be reasonable," Anishai interrupted him coldly before he had the chance to finish the threat. "You will live."

Anarg did not take kindly to this blunt threat. "To arms, men! The thieves have betrayed us!" he cried out, reaching to his belt for his own long sword.

The next moment, Anishai disappeared; and Imoen, cursing herself for letting herself get caught in the scene, followed her example, turning on her finger the small ring she had bought earlier that day on Waukeen's Promenade. The purchase had made a large dent in her finances, but the expense certainly paid off: the ring's enchantment would now afford her momentary invisibility.

She would wonder how Anishai would have dealt with the matter if Imoen did not have the ring—but it was obvious: the thieves expected one to be intelligent enough to take care of one's own skin and not require help. Instead, the girl quickly ran away from the fallen paladins. Arrows did not know that one could not hit invisible targets.

Her plan to put some distance between herself and the attacked men almost worked: all but one of the fallen paladins had dispersed in the opposite direction, searching for the hidden archers. One, however, followed her—almost unerringly, as if he could still see her. Or, perhaps, he had simply decided to hide himself in the same place Imoen had chosen.

Whichever it was, the man was close on her heels; and in the tight alley in which they now were, this meant that Imoen would soon be discovered. Still, this did not mean, of course, that she should kill him; especially if he was only trying to escape.

This was why she herself was more than a bit surprised when her hand coordinated with her eyes, and struck precisely in the thin gap between the man's breast plate and his helmet, tearing through the artery and inflicting an—eventually—mortal wound.

---

Anishai cooed over her all the way back into the guild. "This girl is a born assassin!" she told Mae'Var proudly as soon as she saw the guild-master. "She couldn't have turned out better if I had taught her!"

"Ah." The man, not stopping playing catch-and-throw with his dagger, eyed Imoen curiously. "So, lass, you are _both_ a burglar _and_ an assassin; and, by the look of it, both my hard-hearted lieutenants _and_ my pet wizard have veritably fallen in love with you. How odd. I don't remember that ever happening before... Well, what shall we do with you?"

He was silent for a moment. Then, apparently having come to a decision, he spoke up again, "Given that this is a precedent—how about you choose for yourself? Whom do you want to work for? Anishai, or Zyntris? You will earn much more working for Anishai, of course, whether in the extortion rackets or performing assassinations."

Imoen gulped. "I—I think I'd rather work for Zyntris," she said cautiously, looking from the cool, self-possessed woman to the nervous, ratty man; and then, because she'd much rather not make an enemy of an assassin, she added, "For now, at least."

"Just as I thought," Mae'Var said, as if Imoen had just confirmed some his pre-formed opinion of her. "Well, I did say that it was your choice. Zyntris, she's yours."

---

That night, Imoen dreamt.

In her dream, she was walking through a garden made of blood and tears; bones crunched under her feet, and over her, where the sky should be, there was only a great darkness.

She noticed a familiar figure in the distance, and walked up to it; the figure turned to face her.

"Hello, Imoen," said Irene; and Imoen replied, "Hello, Irene."

Her sister's hair and beard, lush chestnut brown when she had been still alive, were now blood-red, Imoen saw; and her skin was deathly grey. "What are we doing here?" she asked.

"Shh," her sister smiled, and Imoen noticed that her eyes and her mouth were nothing but three empty holes. "We are waiting for someone."

Then, because Imoen realised that she was in a dream, and because dreams have a logic of their own, she asked, "Who? Sarevok?"

Irene smiled at Imoen her toothless, lipless smile. "No, silly," she said. "Why should we be waiting for the wayward one? It is Father we are waiting for, of course."

Then, musingly, she added, "He used to be an assassin, too; did you know that?"

Imoen wanted to run; but running would not achieve anything, of course. She would simply take the garden of blood, tears and bone with her. After all, it was a part of her, she understood with the merciless clarity of dream-logic.

Someone was screaming, far away, and Imoen could not utter a word.

So, mute, she waited next to the silent dwarven ghost clad in shadow; waited, and waited, and then waited still; until, after some indeterminate time, Irene spoke up, desolate, "He will not come. He will not come tonight, yet."

Then, her dead sister turned to her again, and smiled one more depraved smile; and said, "But don't worry, Imoen. He will come. Soon."

She awoke, suddenly and painfully.


	8. II: Pawn to a Queen, 3

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**3**

"You naughty girl," Irene said, and Imoen shuddered. "You have been hiding from Father."

The garden had changed since the sisters had first met here: the lines and notions, previously blurred and indistinct, had cleared and sharpened, revealing a myriad of wonders; a multitude of awful things. A bridge made solely of human femurs, cast over a river of blood; a meadow of flowers made of tears, growing in a wasteland of bones and ash…

The two girls had crossed the bridge; had crossed the meadow; had stopped on a tall ledge overlooking a plain of statues. A cold wind swept over the wasteland plateau, bringing with it the cries of the murdered and the lamentations of those left behind; and the stench of rotting bodies.

"What are these?" Imoen asked, even though she knew that she did not want to learn the answer.

"These?" Irene replied. "Your trophies. The people you have killed. The people you will yet kill. They will demand retribution, one day, before it is over. It is their right."

Imoen looked at the plain below: from edge of vision to edge of vision, rows of humans. Kobolds. Dragons, even.

Retribution, the cold wind whispered to her; retribution was the one thing that a murderer must fear. But she was not a murderer. Not yet. She needed not fear it, yet.

But she would.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Irene asked, smiling an absent, mouthless, eyeless smile; and Imoen shuddered again. This was not Irene; Irene would never say anything like this; Irene had never said anything like this when she had lived.

Except that this was, indeed, Irene; and Imoen knew this with a conviction as utter and absolute as that with which she knew that this could not be her sister.

"But we do not meet today without a purpose," Irene said suddenly over the wind's constant ululation. "Father wanted to give you something when he met you. But you have been hiding from him, and he can't. So, he asked me to give it to you, instead. Seeing how I'm dead—"

For the briefest of moments, the ghost seemed, unbelievably, flustered; but she quickly recovered and finished calmly, "Seeing how I'm dead and it won't be much use to me."

She started to fumble with something at her neck; and Imoen was suddenly overwhelmed with the complete certainty of what the gift would be. "Look," she said. "You don't have to. I already have a necklace of yours." Feeling the need to explain, she added, "I found it in Irenicus' dungeon, see—"

"That one?" the dwarf asked contemptuously as she finally opened the lock and took the necklace off her neck. "That one is useless. Meaningless," she said, and Imoen, who knew how much Irene treasured that little amulet in life, felt betrayed again. "This one," her sister finished, proffering the necklace to Imoen on an open palm, "is where the true path to power lies."

"But I don't want it!" Imoen tried to defend herself. "Thank you, but I don't need it! That one is enough, really!"

The necklace was simple: a strap of leather made of human skin, with a pendant: the Bhaal sigil, a skull surrounded by daggers.

Irene calmly took Imoen's treacherously unresisting hand, and put the necklace into it, and closed Imoen's palm over the necklace; and smiled.

"Oh, no, Imoen," she said. "You will take the gift that is offered."

---

Much had happened in the se'nnight that had passed since Imoen had been accepted into Mae'Var's guild; much had happened—and yet, in a way, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

The sudden order of Aran Linvail's, which forbid Mae'Var's thieves from perusing the pockets of pilgrims and bothering the temples, left Zyntris without employment and the guild without a major source of income with which to pay off the Shadowmaster. To make up for this, Mae'Var was furnished with a part of Gaelan Bayle's territory as means of temporary recompense: the giant bridge which joined the northern part of Athkatla with the south, and which was, after a manner, a district of its own.

With the turf came the jobs; and so, within a se'nnight, Imoen stole the Bust of Sune from Acton Balthis' estate; a Horn of Valhalla from a local fishmonger's house; documents implicating one Saerk Farrahd in the murder of a Moira Delryn (to cover for the theft of the files, she took all the other contents of Farrahd's safe box—which, given that the man was one of the most affluent merchants in Athkatla, brought to her, even after she paid off her guild quota, a very nice sum); two hundred pounds of illithium to compensate for what the guild had to return in the shape of the Amnish Falcon; and, finally, the shaft of the Gesen Bow from a local tanner.

(She also stole the heart of a tiefling actor she met briefly in the local inn: a happenstance which gave rise to several sonnets and more than one play dedicated to an ephemeral wildflower; however, since she was not aware of this, the two never met again and, in any case, the bard's passion died quickly, beyond this short note we shall not concern ourselves with the event any further.)

In her successful new career of a burglar, she met and acquainted herself with her new colleagues: with Kretor, and Embarl (like her, a newcomer to the guild), and Lathan, and Jariel, and also one called, most improbably, Darronal Gwin, second of that name. They were all amiable enough, and quickly came to appreciate her skills; even if they resented somewhat that Imoen was a favourite of not even one, but both Mae'Var's lieutenants.

For, even though the girl was Zyntris' now, Anishai did not stop cooing over her and over her talents; and offered Imoen lessons in her own dark trade; and Imoen, who had decided that it would be unwise to make an enemy from an assassin, accepted to take them. And so, when she was not out breaking in, or sleeping off a well-done break-in, she was in the guild, learning how to prepare, recognise and cure assorted poisons; and when not doing that, she was studying magic with Edwin Odesseiron.

Edwin was, she decided, very much like a cat. He was a megalomaniac and an arrogant buffoon; but, once you learnt what made him purr, he actually turned out to be even, at times, nice. And, whatever his character, he did know his own trade; and had proved true to his word. During those few days, Imoen had learnt a lot of magic; a piece of which had saved Imoen's life earlier that night.

---

The gnome's name was Neb, he had come to Amn from Baldur's Gate, and he was a murderer of children.

That did not concern the Shadow Thieves; so long as Neb did not interfere with their interests, they were perfectly willing to let him be as he was. But one of Gaelan Bayle's informers had told the Thieves that Neb was in possession of a large quantity of illithium, having recently swindled it out of some duergar's tenure; and it was within the Thieves' interest to recover the ore—very much so, indeed. And so, Imoen strapped on her dagger and the pretty pink sword she had found deep within the guild's armoury—the pretty pink sword which was the object of her first spell of identification ever, and in being identified turned out to possess a whole gamut of very interesting abilities—and went with Embarl and Jariel to Neb's little hidey-hole at a time where the owner was supposed to be out of the house; which he was not.

The first to learn this was Jariel, when the invisible Neb stabbed him in the back, in the kidneys; fortunately, in spite of the pain, the man still had wits enough to turn himself invisible—even as invisible did turn Embarl, and Imoen, and Neb.

For a moment, all was at standstill; no one left the tiny house, since neither the window nor the door opened—but not one of the thieves knew where friend or foe was. Neb laughed; Jariel was dying; and Imoen cast her first spell in combat.

It was a small incantation, a cantrip almost, whereof Edwin had told her earlier that day: it summoned a cloud of dust which settled on and clung to everything within the room; and so, Imoen saw, not two paces from her, a gnomish silhouette spelled out in golden glitter.

They managed to save Jariel just in time.

---

In a way, this was the first night in a se'nnight when anything happened.

Not that things had not happened before; but their slow, steady rhythm of thieving by night and apprenticing by day seemed to Imoen almost abnormal in its normalcy. Irenicus, and Sarevok, and people trying to kill her: this was normal life. A routine was something as odd and remote as—Candlekeep. A precious thing, to be treasured; but a state which was short-lived, transitory and fleeting; and a part of her, she discovered, was only waiting for the inevitable end to it.

---

When she killed Neb, and together with Embarl they healed Jariel, the two men hacked off the gnome's head.

"For you," Jariel said, presenting her with the thing; thankfully, wrapped in a piece of cloth. "There is a bounty on this one's head, and you're one incognito enough to deliver it to guards without questions asked. Besides, you earned it."

"Thanks," Imoen said, trying not to look too squeamish and to be graceful in accepting the trophy.

Jariel looked her up and down. "Hey, I have an idea. I was to do another job tonight, not far from here; an easy piece, but quite profitable, too. And, to tell the truth, I'm still a bit weak, so I may just need some help. Want to come with me?"

It was, Imoen knew, Jariel's way of saying thanks for saving his life; and more—a very palpable proof of his gratitude: he would split the profits from the job with her. "Sure," she said. "Why not? Embarl can take the illithium by himself, can't you, Embarl?"

Embarl nodded, took the illithium and the sack with Neb's head, and set off for the guild; they knew that he would not tell anyone of the insubordination. He was a rather nice, if quiet, guy; and Imoen liked him, too, even if she knew him less than Jariel.

---

"So, where are we going?" Imoen asked.

"Not far. To the local tanner's. Believe it or not, but they say he has the Gesen Bow in his cellar. I would chalk it up to too much stale beer, except that—"

"Wait a moment. The Gesen Bow? What's that?"

"You really are new in this city, aren't you?" Jariel laughed. "The Gesen Bow is one of those things which seem to belong in a legend, except that this legend happens to be real. It's the last work and the masterpiece of the greatest bowmaker ever, Gesen Khan: a bow which needs no arrows, because it fires spears of lightning. It was in the possession of the Shadow Thieves until recently; then, it disappeared—and now, it seems, it's surfaced again."

"In a tanner's shop," Imoen replied disbelievingly, her mind still trying to envision a bow shooting out lightning; she replaced the mind-picture with that of herself wielding a lightning bow. This came much easier. _Wow_!

"Strange, isn't it? If the man who told me of this wasn't a steady source of mine, I wouldn't believe him— Wait, we're here. Let's hope that this time, the man isn't at home."

---

The tanner wasn't at home; but what awaited them instead was, in many ways, much worse.

It started with a faint, sweet smell which permeated the air of the house; a smell Imoen knew all too well. But a tanner had to scrape flesh off the hides he was working with, hadn't he?

By the time they both reached the staircase which led to the cellar below the house, the smell had become much thicker; almost unbearable.

"Are you sure you want to go on?" Jariel asked. He had turned a rather interesting shade of green, Imoen noticed.

"Sure," she replied. "I'm fine. But how about you? I mean, you look like you're about to—"

The man cast her a pained look. "If you're going in, how can I not? I'm the one who pulled you here, after all. It's my job."

Imoen bit her lip, trying not to laugh. "Let's go, then."

---

Downstairs, the smell, if possible, grew still stronger; and now Imoen, too, had to prevent herself from retching. This, and the bodies on the ground, and the three tripwires she had spotted within a minute of entering the place, instantly clarified any doubts she might have borne before.

"He's him!" she exclaimed. From the expression on Jariel's face, the man, too, had made the obvious connection. "The serial killer," he agreed. "The one who did in those beggars. Let's find the bow and get out of here, quickly. I'm not up for another fight."

Imoen blinked. Suddenly, she missed everyone all over again; and perhaps even more than ever before. If the tanner was the man who had killed all those beggars, then they should do something about it, she wanted to scream. And if she were with Irene, and Jaheira, and Kivan, and Khalid, and even Xan, they would. Or they would leave and tell someone. But they would not stay here and search for some stupid bow.

But she was not in that company anymore; and so, she shook her head, and said only, "I'll take the left side of the room. You take the right."

---

They made their way slowly through the room, removing the traps on the floor as they searched for any place large enough to hide a bow. When the tanner—Rejiek, Jariel told her his name was—returned, he would know that the gig was up, and that he had to run. They might as well scream it out in the street outside, she thought.

At last, they both, almost simultaneously, reached the small bed which stood on the far side of the room. There was no other place to search; the only hope was that the killer would be conventional enough to hide anything in the mattress or under the bed.

He was; and there was even a bow there; or rather, the shaft of a bow.

Jariel swore, shortly and loudly. "They split it! They actually split it!" he said incredulously. "There is no string— Are you sure that there is no string there?" he demanded of Imoen.

"Nope," she replied, shrugging; for some reason, she wasn't really sorry for the man and for the lost profit.

Jariel reached himself under the bed. "There is something there, though," he announced, and started to pull out the thing stuck between the mattress and the rim of the bed. When he was finished, they both looked at the object; and, after a moment of looking, they both at last started to be sick.

It turned out that, however long one travelled, there always still remained one more sight one was not prepared for; and that, in Imoen's case, that sight might be that of an incomplete armour made of human flesh.

"I'm taking it to Aegisfield as evidence," the girl said as soon as she decided she was finished. Aegisfield was a guard she had learnt to recognise, always pestering people about the serial killer in the district and warning them not to leave homes after dark; he had never seen Imoen in her working capacity, and, by the looks of it, did not suspect her occupation in the slightest.

On his side of the bed, Jariel made a small move, as if he were about to protest; but Imoen cut him off. "If I'm incognito enough to claim the bounty for Neb tomorrow, I'm incognito enough to tell Aegisfield what we've found here today," she announced.

---

It had been the first night in a se'nnight that Imoen had killed; it had been the first night in seven that she had seen a dead body again—a skinless, decomposing body (and Xan had no eyes, she remembered, incongruously and incoherently and without making any sense at all); and so, it had been the first night in a week that she had dreamt, dreamt of trophies and gifts of pendants on straps of human skin.

She rose from her bed and came up to the small stand where she kept a mirror and some of her personal bits and pieces; and also, a jug of milk, prepared every single evening personally by herself; milk with a poppy-seed extract Edwin had told her would give her a dreamless sleep; the milk which had turned out to be completely useless against the power of a dead god. Well… it had been worth the try.

There was blood on the front of the shirt she had slept in; and, as she was standing in front of the mirror when she first noticed it, she saw perfectly what shape the blood-stain was.

It was Irenicus' doing. And Bhaal's doing, too; but Irenicus' doing, first. A sigil of her dead father, just between, and on, her breasts; just below Irene's necklace; just where the dream-pendant would have settled if she had ever worn it outside of dream. A grinning skull and the daggers around it, all now printed in her blood on the white linen of her chemise. It was all so idiotically… melodramatic; and yet—and yet…

"I get the hint, sister," she whispered viciously at the mirror; and, touching the raw skin of the opened scar, started, for the first time in her life, to heal herself using her dead sire's power.

---

(Edwin could sometimes even be sweet; and Imoen actually suspected that, in his nasally-whining-annoyingly-arrogant way, he might be attempting to check whether they could be potentially, possibly, involved in that old, timeless scheme of the older, and inevitably male, master, and the younger, and inevitably female, apprentice. And the lack of originality of this arrangement didn't even particularly bother her; certainly not as much as the scars.)

---

The rest of the night was dreamless, but only for being sleepless; in the morning, Imoen took Neb's head to the Athkatlan Government Buildings where she might claim her bounty. She was also going there to pay for the licence which would let her use magic on the streets of the city; between Aegisfield's reward, her share of the spoils of her thievery and what little she had from her escape with Sarevok, she could easily afford it. And, if anything, the previous night had showed her that if she could afford it, she should purchase it.

If she was going to stay in Athkatla, anyway. It was a bit useless to cash out such an amount if she was not going to remain in the city for long.

Still deliberating whether she wanted to pay or not, she entered the building, claimed the bounty, paid for the licence and left; and, since she left through the main door and not the side door through which she had first entered, she met Viconia.

Viconia was, in the order the matters presented themselves to Imoen, someone Imoen remembered, a priestess of Shar, a drow, and currently tied to a stake.

She was someone Imoen remembered—and that was a prize in itself: someone whose impression Imoen still carried within her mind. There were some memories of the woman's feud with Kivan; of her hatred of Jaheira; of her loathing of Khalid; of her contempt for Xan; of, finally, her strange attitude to Irene, to whom, apparently, Viconia had—owed her life? Not a single good memory; but a memory, nonetheless. Another thing always treasured the most when it was absent.

Viconia was a priestess; and they were short of priests, as everyone had learnt by that time. _Vampires_, the guild rumour went: _they are vampires._ Vampires had been attacking the Shadow Thieves for months now; vampires had been somehow tied in with Irenicus; the constant vampire attacks had caused the Shadow Thieves' retaliatory assault on Irenicus' dungeon; the woman Imoen had seen while she and Sarevok had been escaping must have been, as she had then by pure chance guessed, a vampire. Vampires had been the reason why Aran Linvail was now trying to make amends with the priests of the major religions and the holy orders; and why the Shadow Thieves tried to draft as many free lances into their ranks as possible.

Viconia was also, unfortunately, a drow; and Imoen, currently entangled as she was in her private divagations regarding obnoxious wizards who possibly might become a bit more, and possibly might not, could not help but notice the woman's rather unscarred body.

In the end, though, Viconia was currently tied to a stake; and that decided the matter. Imoen turned the ring on her finger.

---

"Viconia— No, keep on yelling!"

The voice was young, female and somehow familiar; Viconia took a deep breath and let out another long series of obscenities towards the rivvin who had dared touch her and now wanted to burn her as a sacrifice to their goddess. The sloppy job of these rank amateurs was disgusting. What did they know of killing? The drow—

"Great!" the voice said with no small admiration. "I'll have to remember the last one, that was great— Now, listen. I'm cutting through your bonds, but pretend for a moment that you're still tied, all right? I'll make you invisible. Once they start screaming and casting divination spells, run. Don't fight. Run. We'll meet— Um. By the bridge, all right?"

---

"It appears, rivvil, that I owe you my life again. Tell me, do you still have that miserable jaluk in your group?"

"Kivan?" Imoen started. "No. He's dead. They all are."

The expression on the drow's face barely changed. "Ah. Then you failed to avenge the fallen, and only managed to add to their number? I _thought_ that yours was a troop of weaklings—"

Imoen picked up a pebble from the street and threw is as far as she could into the river. It bounced several times from the surface before finally sinking into the water. "Mine, Viconia, was a _company_ of _friends_. So don't you dare talk of them this way… There were— Someone interfered. Someone much stronger than us, or Sarevok."

The drow's dark eyes peeked at Imoen curiously from beneath the hood. "Sarevok? So you've learnt with whom your blood feud was, at least."

"Yes," Imoen said, distracted, and threw another stone into the river. "Yes. We've learnt it. But… I don't want to talk about this right now, all right? Tell me, do you have anyplace to go? Because if you don't, I think that there is someone you might want to meet."

---

Sarevok was not one of those things which were precious for how transient, or indeed, already lost, they were; quite the contrary. Like Irenicus and Bhaal, he had a way of insinuating himself into Imoen's life, unasked and unwanted and always at the worst time possible.

They had both, Viconia and she, returned together to the guild, and Imoen was in the process of introducing the drow to Zyntris, when Anishai barged into the common room; seeing her at that moment, few would believe that she was a serious no-nonsense woman over forty and an assassin lieutenant of a Shadow Thief guild-master; and not an excitable teenager younger than Imoen herself.

"Zyntris! You wouldn't believe— Oh, Imoen, hello! Listen, today's lesson is off. And tomorrow's, too. I'll be too tired for it, I think! Do you know what'll be happening tonight, Zyntris?"

"Dun'no," Zyntris scratched his head in mock contemplation, all the while eyeing the excited woman with clear amusement. "Bu' seein' how yer so jumpy ye could well be Imoen hes'self… I'd say it's sumthin' to do with that big job ye've been plannin'."

"You'd be right," Anishai said. "It's that sect. Only the best are going, but since it's Mae'Var's territory, I'm taking the most people." She was beaming; and it was all that was necessary for Imoen to know how long and hard Mae'Var and Anishai must have fought to achieve this small victory against the woman's counterparts in Bayle's and Aran Linvail's own guilds.

"Ye'll wipe them out in three seconds square," Zyntris said. "If tha' much."

"And they say," Anishai added, still wrapped up in her success, "that the Shadowmaster's letting out his new toy on this one— Aren't you sure you won't want to go, Imoen? They say a lot of things about that one, but no one really knows anything for sure about him. Some even say that he's that killer who wanted to start up that war in Baldur's Gate, all those months ago, and then disappeared into thin air! Ridiculous, I say; but— But you've gone all pale! Are you all right?"

"Er. No. I mean, yes. It's nothing," Imoen said; and then, to change the topic, quickly asked, "Look, is Mae'Var free? Only there's someone he might want to see." She gestured at Viconia with her head.

Only now did Anishai notice the drow at all. "Of course," she said. "Yes. He's free. Zyntris—"

Imoen did not hear the rest of what the assassin said; she grabbed Viconia's hand and escaped the room.

---

After witnessing Viconia heal a small, dagger-inflicted wound in her own hand, Mae'Var gave the drow his stamp of approval. The terms of her employment were simple: bed and fare, and, if she went on missions with the thieves, an equal share in the loot's worth.

"And may I say," he added as the conversation drew to an end, "that it will certainly be a pleasure to have such an outrageously beautiful woman here."

Behind Viconia's back, Imoen scowled. That was the last straw the woman needed, in her opinion; Viconia was already proving everything Imoen had thought her to be, and more.

It turned out that the girl was correct: the drow's voice immediately became even more silky and seductive than it had been during the whole conversation with the guild-master. "I'm certainly looking forward to our… cooperation," Viconia purred.

"Until later, then?" Mae'Var asked, obviously amused.

"Until later, jaluk," an equally amused Viconia replied.

---

It was a small consolation that neither did Viconia seem to pay a particular attention to Edwin—or 'that scrawny male' as she called him immediately upon entering one of the other empty rooms on the top floor of the guild—nor did he particularly seem to enjoy the drow's presence in what used to be his private sanctuary; a constant stream of mumbling and muttering followed them all the way into the small space.

Imoen decided that she might as well try to make up to the wizard for this unwelcome intrusion; and so, when Viconia settled into the room and suggested that Imoen introduce her to the guild, Imoen only brought her to the floor below, found Jariel, introduced Viconia to him; and, without waiting for his reaction, returned to the top floor. She would use the free time she had from Anishai's cancelled lesson to fulfil her apprentice tasks.

It turned out to be a very good idea: especially when she saw the list of potions she was supposed to prepare that day. She grabbed the list and marched off to the desk where Edwin was studying a book.

"It's a joke, right?" she asked. "Four batches of invisibility potions, two batches of oils of speed, strength potions, healing potions, _potions_ _of_ _explosion_?! Antidotes to all major poisons?! Look, Edwin, I'm sorry for bringing Viconia here, I really am—I didn't really know that you'd be so angry—but it's a joke, right? I don't even know how to make potions of explosion yet!"

To her surprise, the wizard tore the piece of parchment from her hand. "(The simians)," he muttered, "(Yes, let's kick Edwin around, see if he screams.) Is there some unusual going on downstairs?" he asked aloud.

"Well, yes, Anishai is all agog about some top secret mission—" Imoen broke as a suspicious thought started to creep into her mind.

Edwin had no qualms against speaking aloud what he was thinking. "She'd want to have everything fresh to show off to the alpha simians, then. (Which means that, alas, it's good-bye to a single innovative thought for today. The vulgarity has won, and Edwin Odesseiron's mind must take leave now.)" He sighed deeply and finished, raising his voice again, "I will have to help you, then, since obviously there is no way you can deal with a task of this magnitude yourself. First, we shall deal with the potion of explosion. Observe."

Imoen watched as Edwin methodically worked his way through the preparation of the potion, from time to time making a small comment about some feature of the procedure; when the potion was almost done, fizzling and bubbling in a large block of ice, Edwin suddenly switched the point of his lecture.

"The potion of explosion," he said, "is, of course, only a meagre replacement of the fireball spell, to be employed only by the uninitiated into the arcane. (Fortunately, all too often the idiots manage to misunderstand the directions and liberate the world from their noxious influence. Though how one can misunderstand 'don't drop' is a feat beyond even MY comprehension.) The fireball spell provides a much finer—and potentially far more devastating in the hands of the skilled wizard—approach to the same problem. Together with the flame arrow and Melf's Minute Meteors, it belongs to a group of pyrexic spells of average difficulty with which we will be dealing tomorrow. You will, I believe, (yes, she will), notice some common features of these spells with the Aganazzar's Scorcher and the elementary spell of burning hands—"

"Can we have a picnic tomorrow?" Imoen interrupted. She had just decided that, scars or no scars—if the trail of events ever got that far at all, that is—life did owe her something. Even if that something was only a scrawny male; sometimes one had to take what life offered to settle the debt. Or at least try out what was being offered.

Edwin, evidently still deep within the contemplation of pyrexic spells of average difficulty, blinked slowly. "A picnic?" he repeated; but he did not mutter any objection.

"Yeah. A picnic," Imoen replied. "We'll be owed some fun when we finish all this here today," she added. Remembering that she actually had more arguments, she added, "I bought a licence today, so we could have the lesson outside tomorrow. And Anishai's let me off. Please?"

"Wherever in Athkatla would you make a _picnic_? (She bought a licence? Why didn't she tell me she was going to buy a licence?)"

"It was supposed to be a surprise," Imoen lied smoothly, covering for the fact that she had not known whether she'd buy the licence or not until after she had bought it. "How about the city graveyard? It's pretty old, and quite nice, really. Very green. Almost like a park."

Edwin was still looking at her dumbfounded. "The graveyard? (The _graveyard_?)"

"Yes. And perhaps we'll even meet some skeletons, or ghouls— Fire's supposed to be good against the undead, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. (Didn't anyone bother to inform her that her guild is the target of a vampire cabal? Even I cannot be asked to deal—)"

Imoen, though actually impressed that the news had managed to permeate the walls of Edwin's ivory tower, interrupted, "But we'll go during the day! Please?"

To her secret delight, Edwin flushed, up to the very tip of his pierced nose. "All right," he said. "First, however, there is this monkey business to finish. (I can't wait.)"

And then, in a much different, much quieter and obviously surprised voice, he suddenly repeated, "(I can't wait.)"

This time, Imoen happily pretended not to have heard the muttering.

---

That night, Anishai and four of her best assassins, equipped with an assortment of potions it had taken the two wizards the whole day to prepare, left to deal with the sect of the Unseeing Eye under the command of Sarevok. And Imoen, before she succumbed to—mercifully dreamless—sleep, wondered in passing why she was still alive.

In her bid for normalcy—a normalcy she knew wouldn't last; for, after all, as someone had once told her, there _was_ a prophecy in action—she had done her best to put Sarevok out of her mind; but that did not mean that her brother stopped existing. And he must know—for she refused to believe that he would not—that she was still in Athkatla; and in one of the Shadow Thieves' guilds.

Which explained all; apart from why she was still alive.


	9. II: Pawn to a Queen, 4

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**4**

Grey really didn't go well with pink.

Imoen sighed.

She had been aware that her armour clashed horribly with her hair; but it had never really mattered before. The armour had to be grey, because the colour helped her disappear in shadows; the hair had to be pink, because she wanted it to be.

But now, she was facing a terrible conundrum: she could leave the guild house without her armour and risk death; or she could leave it in the grating grey armour and risk looking ugly.

She sighed again; uncrossed her legs; re-crossed them, this time the other way round; put her hand on her knee; her head on the palm of her hand; and started to contemplate the terrible grey greyness of the grey armour again.

This was the one advantage to being a wizard, she supposed. Wizards had spells to protect them, and so they could wear whatever they wanted to. Although, for some reason, they insisted on those silly robes. What person in their right mind wore something like that? Even Irene, usually so sensible in most things, had taken to the fashion.

Imoen sighed yet again; and the sigh led in the due course of matters to the rest of the procedure.

Of course, if she was to save Edwin from a horde of horrific undead and earn his undying love and gratitude in the process, she could not let _herself_ be killed. And this meant, regrettably, that the armour was in.

She looked out of the window. At least the weather was fine; and, in fact, it looked as if she had even woken up in time for breakfast.

**---**

The breakfast in Mae'Var's guild was prepared on spot, by one of the guild-members who served as the guild-master's weekly bodyguard; this time, by Embarl. Imoen waved a hand to the man as she came down the stairs into the communal room; he waved back.

Everyone else was already seated at the long table which, at other times, served to assess the value of loot or to plan out heists: Mae'Var with Zyntris at the top of the table, Edwin somewhat further on; finally, at the other end, the ordinary members of the guild, Gorch and Gorvin, already slurping beer at this early morning hour, and Jariel and the twins, Marusha and Marisha. Viconia, Imoen noticed, was already sitting far closer to the guild-master than a newcomer should; it was only of pure self-preservation instinct that she had not taken Anishai's place at Mae'Var's right hand, Imoen supposed.

The girl's own status in the guild was unsteady: on one hand, she was only a regular member of the ranks, one of Zyntris' burglars; on the other hand, she was Edwin's apprentice, and had the right to live on the premises. Her place by the table fell therefore somewhere in the middle of the table's length. She plopped on the long board next to Viconia (Edwin almost-smiled at her as she was sitting down) and reached for the food: meat, eggs and bread, all tried extensively for poison before being put on the guild table.

There was no news of Anishai yet; but it was not ten minutes later that the woman herself appeared, in the company of all four of the assassins she had set out with; all, by the looks of it, unharmed. There were blood streaks and smudges on her graphite-grey armour; and a wild, joyful look in her eyes. She had had a good night, Imoen decided.

Anishai's first words confirmed the girl's verdict. "He's unbelievable!" she announced even before taking a deep swig of wine from Zyntris' goblet; and Imoen's heart instantly dropped. "He's— Whatever they said of him, he's that, and more. He's Bhaalspawn—"

"Who?" three voices asked almost simultaneously. Imoen looked around: Viconia, Zyntris, and Edwin. Only Mae'Var and she had remained silent.

Anishai looked from one face to another. "Sarevok. The Shadowmaster's new favourite— He really is the one who was planning that war with the Gate, by the way, Arkanis says." She reached across the table for a piece of bread and, biting into it, added, "And he does have the looks of a soldier, that uncouth, yelling and shouting, sort. But it was nothing like this, not at all; on the contrary, it was all very elegantly done— He knows how to put assassins to good use—!"

At her place by the table, Imoen rolled her eyes; but Anishai even still wasn't finished gushing. "—He commanded almost as if he were an assassin himself! Why didn't you tell me?" she turned to Mae'Var accusatorily.

The man shrugged. "Why should I spoil a pleasant surprise? Sit down, Anishai. You'll tell us all that happened as you eat."

"What happened?" The woman laughed. "We killed them all, without any losses, that's what happened; the loot was minuscule, so it all goes to the Shadowmaster's own coffers. Prestige is all we're getting; but, be sure, you _will_ get it; everyone performed flawlessly— And I'm tired."

"You have my leave, then," Mae'Var replied; and Anishai, having taken another sip of wine, disappeared in the depths of the guild building.

"That true?" Zyntris asked curiously as soon as the assassin left them. "The Shadowmaster's own is a Bhaalspawn? A real Child of Murder? Ye seen 'im?"

"I have, indeed," Mae'Var replied brusquely; rudely, almost. "And while Anishai's right that he has the appearance of a seasoned fighter, whether he is a Child of Murder or not, I cannot tell."

At that, Viconia's silky voice joined in the conversation. "And is it true that he tried to engineer a war?"

Mae'Var shook off some invisible dust from his sleeve. "A war which nearly cost Aran Linvail his position and his life," he said matter-of-factly.

"What an extremely intriguing pet to have, then."

"And extremely dangerous," Mae'Var said, finally letting the faintest trace of criticism into his words even as his eyes met Viconia's over the table.

Suddenly, Edwin's nasal voice piped up. "Not necessarily. There do exist simple magical means of exacting utter compliance from a subject. A geas, for example. (But not all are possessed of knowledge and acumen enough to perceive this, of course.)"

Lothander had a geas cast on him, Imoen remembered; and they had to find a book—no, to ask for a book— "What's a geas?" she asked aloud to stop thinking.

Edwin looked at her appreciatively. "A geas is a magical obligation, resulting in an excruciatingly painful death to the subject if violated; even the mere thought of going against the oath is enough to produce distress. A most ingenious concept—"

"That is enough, Edwin. We understand, I think," Mae'Var said sharply, cutting the wizard short. "I must say that, from what I saw of him, Sarevok did not really seem the type to let himself be subject to anything akin to this…geas. But I may be mistaken; and the Shadowmaster, admittedly, is not a man without his own resources."

Imoen suddenly remembered all the rumours which said that Mae'Var had attempted to wrestle Aran Linvail's position from the Shadowmaster when Sarevok had almost managed to implicate the Thieves in the impending war between the Gate and Amn.

**---**

"He is the one who owes you the entertainment of his death, is he not? Sarevok?"

The drow's voice reached Imoen when the girl was alone in her room, having repaired there after the breakfast. She took a look from her bed: Viconia was standing in the doorframe, watching her curiously from below the heavy, long-lashed eyelids.

For a moment, Imoen contemplated the question. Odd as it was, before Viconia planted it, this perspective had never occurred to the girl. The first feud had been primarily Irene's: it had been on Irene that Sarevok's attention had concentrated; Gorion had been Irene's father more than Imoen's; it had been Irene who, with the typical dwarven stubbornness whose possession she had constantly denied had made her way through the plots, assassination attempts and simple malice until she had learnt who had been standing behind them all—

Sarevok. He had killed Irene—but then Irenicus had killed Xan and Kivan; and things had become so complicated—

They had; but the drow's words showed Imoen something else.

Ever since that escape from Irenicus' place, she had only been thinking whether Sarevok would kill her or not. She had never thought whether she would kill him.

And perhaps she should. They were siblings, after all.

The novelty of the thought was striking.

"Come on in," she told Viconia.

The drow entered and closed the door behind herself. "You knew that he is a Bhaalspawn," she said once inside; and this time, it was even less of a question than previously.

"How do you know?" Imoen asked guardedly.

Viconia approached the window and looked out. The sun was high on the sky; the woman hissed and adjusted her hood. "You and Mae'Var were the only ones who didn't ask the question."

"I could have guessed."

"You could; however, you did not. And that hargluk you used to travel with—she was a Bhaalspawn, too. And so are you."

Imoen felt blood escape her face. _"How do you know?" _she asked again, this time through clenched teeth. Somewhere inside her, something wanted to escape, to kill, to murder; to do absolutely everything within her powers to protect her secret.

Viconia was watching her through half-closed eyes. "It is obvious… once you know what to search for," she admitted. "I didn't, before. But there was something strange in that—"

"Irene. Her name was Irene," Imoen almost hissed out.

"—Irene," Viconia finished smoothly before adding, "So, she was your sister, too? And this is a family feud? Good. These are the best," she said lightly.

Somewhere in Imoen's mind, a phrase she did not know she knew surfaced. "_Vith'ir_, Viconia," she said matter-of-factly.

The drow only laughed in response. "Do you even know what you have just said, rivvil? But don't worry. As I said—you have to know what to search for to find it. Most don't. You rivvin are—"

"—so foolish, I know. And so blind," Imoen finished demurely. She did know this; why did she know this, of all the possible things?

"True," Viconia laughed again. "But I am not blind. And you are not foolish. No one knows, do they?"

When Imoen did not reply, the Sharran nodded and said, admiringly, "_Jal khaless zhah waela._ All trust is foolish; and you are not." She shook her head. "No, you most certainly are not, abbil. Like a drow, you are your only friend."

"My sister was my friend," Imoen said, out of pure contrariness; because now, after all, her sister was visiting her in dreams and bringing unwanted gifts.

"And your brother wants to kill you—and you want to kill him, do you not? And there must be others; it's always like this: for one Valas, a hundred sisters—"

Suddenly, Viconia broke off. Her face did not change the slightest; but she looked away from Imoen, and the girl sensed that the drow must have said more than she had meant to.

"Never mind that," Viconia said at length, looking back at Imoen. "Old memories, which should not concern anyone anymore. Tell me, abbil. Did you know that that scrawny jaluk—"

"I know," Imoen quickly interrupted before Viconia had a chance to use one of her special Viconia innuendo-filled expressions for a part of her life Imoen now regarded with some odd, unexpected tenderness; and even with some small hope. "As a matter of fact, we're going on picnic together today. So, I'd much rather you kept your dusky appeals and all that away from him. No offence meant."

Viconia's eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed, as she listened to Imoen's impassioned speech; but, in the end, she only laughed again.

"And none taken, rivvil. I would never take to quarrel over such a miserable specimen; no offence meant— Mae'Var is a far more interesting male, and will suffice for now. Though, I must admit," the drow purred on silkily, "that this brother of yours does intrigue me. It is always so good to hear of a male with ambition. Perhaps you'll let me play with him before you kill him, mmm?"

For some reason, Imoen did not find this too amusing.

**---**

By midday, Imoen's mood improved slightly; but, for the major part, it was replaced by an odd sort of apprehension. She questioned her choice of garments (why, oh why didn't they make armours in pink?); her choice of company (really, Edwin was nice, but what would they talk about, apart from spells... and sometimes, he could talk of spells for definitely too long at one time; perhaps she should have picked someone like Jarlien instead—then, they could at least talk about that time they had gagged together); and, above all, her sanity. A _picnic?_ Why, of all things, a _picnic?_ A picnic with a pyknic wizard. Or, possibly, a scrawny jaluk.

At least, she consoled herself, the weather was fine.

**---**

"(We should have a bag of holding. Actually… we _should_ have a bag of holding. I'm a genius.)"

"Stop grumbling, Edwin! We're almost there. See?"

The graveyard was old and long fallen into disuse; the actual burials must now be taking place somewhere else, Imoen suspected: there simply wasn't enough space to serve Athkatla's many victims here.

Here, there were crypts; ancient crypts where the proud noble families of Amn kept the mortals remnants of the progenitors of their lines, tightly sealed and warded against any intrusion. There were free-standing graves which, exposed to the elements, had long lost any distinguishing features; so that those they had been erected for, however important or insignificant in life, now all lay side by side in the equality of anonymity. There were, finally, spots and corners over which, after years of their perusal by humans, nature had laid her claim again: lawns of grass under giant trees, cypresses and yews and oaks; all of which served to make the cemetery, paradoxically perhaps, one of the very few places in Athkatla where natural life and natural order prevailed.

It was silent here, silent enough to hear the birds singing in the tree-crowns: few people ever came here, and fewer still since the rumours of a vampire cabal inhabiting this place had spread throughout Athkatla. At present, only the priest of Kelemvor Imoen had met before was walking amidst the old tombs: a healthy, energetic young man with red cheeks, brown hair and an open, earnest face. Imoen had wondered how someone like this had found his way into Kelemvor's priesthood; the man seemed far too… alive, somehow, for someone who spent his life among the graves.

She nodded to the cleric as he passed them; and then, turned to Edwin. The wizard had fallen silent upon entering the graveyard; now, he was carefully surveying it. "I remember," he said a bit hesitantly, "something of this place. There are soothsayers who claim that an ancient artefact of great power, long lost to all (but perhaps not so lost to the perceptive mage) is buried somewhere here."

"Do they know where?" Imoen asked, instantly interested. "I mean, a bit more precisely? This place is huge!"

Edwin slowly turned his attention from the graveyard to the enthused girl, and frowned. "I don't know. In one of the lower tombs, perhaps?"

"Maybe one day we'll go look for it, then?" Imoen asked; for, suddenly, she felt that she would, indeed, want to go adventuring again; to search for, and even, possibly, find, long-lost artefacts in long-sealed tombs; to join a group of like-minded people and trawl through the countryside, and help people—

She had missed the life of an adventurer after all, she discovered to her no small surprise. Not only the people she had travelled with, but the life itself as well; dangerous and dirty as it was.

As she mused over this, Edwin considered her offer. "Yes," he said at length. "We may. Why not? But not today: today," he suddenly grew all serious and sombre, as usually when entering his teacher persona, "is the day we study fire spells."

"And have a picnic," Imoen reminded him quickly.

"And have a picnic, yes. (I have not been carrying enough food to feed the whole guild for a tenday for nothing, after all.) Where do we sit?"

**---**

They picked a spot in the shadow of a giant oak; and, amidst the bread and fruit and sweetmeats and sweet wine, all bought by them on the way to the cemetery, they spread out the scrolls Edwin had selected as Imoen's study material for the day; and soon, the air around them was filled with arcane phraseology the likes of:

"…and this little wiggle here? What does it mean?"

"…oh, I see… so it's either alteration or evocation?! Neat!"

"...ah. So, I wave my hand this way… and then, this way…"

However, it was quickly discovered between the two that, however beneficial a pleasant company, a fine weather and a delicious meal is to good digestion and an entertainment better yet, the same conditions need not necessarily be the most conducive to studying.

**---**

"No, no, no, _no_!!!" Edwin's nasal whine rose to the highest pitch Imoen had ever heard it rise to thus far. "It is the _fireball_. The king and the queen of all spells! You cannot fail to cast the fireball. You cannot. (She cannot. Not the fireball. No. She would not do this to me.) Repeat after me: first, the sulphur—"

He paced up and down next to Imoen as he spoke; the blood-red cloak, which he had muffled himself into especially for the outing, billowing behind him on the small breeze; nodding as Imoen repeated slowly each move and every syllable of the spell yet again. (The spell really did share some features with the Scorcher; or, to say it exactly, it _was_ the Scorcher almost up to the very end.)

Feeling how the magical energies around her coalesced and conjoined, Imoen passed bravely to the point which had been giving her difficulty: the point where the spell shifted abruptly from the Scorcher to the part common with the Minute Meteors. Edwin stopped his pacing and started watching closer; corrected Imoen's left hand; started pacing again; and, as Imoen was feeling triumphant and self-satisfied and all proud of herself—having suddenly remembered what came next in the incantation—started to say, "No! Don't—"

He did not finish in time: a red flower of fire bloomed not ten paces from Imoen and him, spreading quickly and washing everything with flames; and Imoen, wide-eyed, all too late remembered how, when Irene used to cast the fireball, she had been very careful to set it off rather further away from herself than Imoen did now.

But Imoen was a very young wizard yet; and so, her fireball was quite weaker than her sister's used to be. She felt a wave of heat on her face; and that was all.

Beside her, Edwin finished, weakly, "—drop."

Imoen looked at the wizard; at his singed beard and eyebrows, and the layer of ash on his face; and wondered darkly if, henceforth, she, too, would be classified amongst the simians who had better rid the world of their noxious influence.

Edwin was looking back at her; a strange grin, one she had never seen before, appeared on his face.

"See?" he said. "Fireball. Poof!"

He made a move with his fingers, as if to indicate explosion; Imoen looked at it; looked at the wizard's ash-covered face and the whites of eyes in it; and laughed.

At first, Edwin's countenance started to take on the look of offended dignity; but, after a moment, it disappeared; and he laughed, too.

And then, the expression on his face changed once again; and Imoen's heart missed a beat.

**---**

Edwin was _looking_ at her; he was not only looking at her, but he was _looking_ at her; and, for a moment, suddenly everything was all right and Imoen felt as happy as she had not felt for a very long time. And this single moment lasted an infinity; until it came to an all-too-abrupt end.

Edwin's eyes narrowed, and he became rigid and stiff; and he was not looking at her anymore, but somewhere beyond her shoulder; and Imoen, knowing that something was amiss, turned around to see what was happening.

The man who was approaching them from between the tombs was tall and dressed in a blood-red cowl very similar to that of Edwin's; its hood was drawn over his head.

"And so, the little traitorous rat has finally been found," he said as soon as he had neared them; his voice, too, carried accents and inflections very similar to Edwin's. If any doubt had still remained as to his identity, the next words would quickly dispel it. "Homeland magic never fails; while it was only a matter of time before failed the little wards you had put up around yourself to prevent divination, renegade. Well. Let us cease this nonsense and be on our way."

"—no," Edwin said in a tiny voice which somehow did not match his usual self-aggrandisement at all; and then, after casting an incoherently apologetic look at Imoen, he started to chant a spell.

The man's eyes widened in surprise; without a word of banter more, he, too, started to cast some incantation Imoen did not recognise.

Without a thought more, the thief launched herself at the stranger, jabbing at him with her dagger in an attempt to disrupt his concentration and his spell-casting; but in vain. The man's skin was thick as stone—Edwin had mentioned a spell to that effect to her, though they had not arrived at it yet in her lessons—and she simply could not break through it to reach his flesh.

And then, Edwin finished his casting; and the man was dead.

Imoen felt the stranger's body give way under her; surprised by the suddenness of the change, she lost her balance and managed to recover it only at the last moment before falling. "_What_ was _that_?" she yelled out.

"A Finger of Death," Edwin replied; and Imoen, surprised again, this time by the change in his voice, looked at the wizard; and found him changed to her eyes.

Edwin looked smug and happy and self-satisfied; his dark eyes were glistening, and a small, cruel smirk appeared on his lips. But that was not all: he seemed larger, somehow: taller and more self-assured than Imoen had ever seen him be. He had killed and was now enjoying his kill and the assurance of superiority that had come of it; and the thing, the _presence_ within Imoen stirred again, resonating in perfect accord with the wizard's sentiment. It clearly approved of what it was seeing. It loved it. It admired it. It revelled in it.

Thankfully, the impression quickly broke as Edwin said, "We must leave here. Quick. Before anyone follows him," and Imoen had to focus her mind on the then and there again.

**---**

They quickly gathered the scrolls and the spell-books; the girl silently hoping that the young priest would forgive her the mess they were leaving behind.

"And now," Edwin said when they were finished, "hold onto my cloak—no, better, onto my waist. (Somehow, this is not the way I had first imagined this happening.) I will open a dimension door which will—"

"—take us home," he finished; and they were in front of the guild building.

**---**

"Could I ask a favour of you?"

Imoen looked up from the mess of parchment she had dropped on her bed. "Sure," she said. "What is it?"

The wizard seemed to recover his self-confidence a bit. "There is a man I was to meet today in the Five Flagons. He was supposed to deliver to me some documents—some documents crucial to my research, not some casual correspondence, I assure you. However, it appears that, due to the circumstances you are aware of and I could not possibly foresee, I cannot be present at that meeting. (Meddlesome fool. Did he have to turn up today? _Of course_ he had to turn up today.)"

"You want me to go and fetch the papers for you," Imoen said, ignoring the mumbling. As soon as they had entered the guild, Edwin, with barely a word said (or muttered), ran up the two flights of stairs; when she, too, went up to the top floor of the guild, she found him frantically scurrying about, upsetting various flasks onto the worktable and bringing strange objects down from the odds-and-ends shelf. This conversation was the first they had since they had left the cemetery; and Imoen was left with a strange sense of something unfinished, undecided, and generally left in limbo.

Edwin seemed genuinely surprised that she had caught the drift of his circuitous speech. "Yes," he admitted after a moment. "Could you?"

Imoen shrugged. "Why not? I'm free right now. The Five Flagons, you say?"

"Yes. The name's Marcus. (A fat, drunken lout; but useful… on the very rare occasion.)"

**---**

Marcus was, indeed, a fat lout; and, after a day spent quarrelling with drow and fighting Red Wizards, Imoen was in no mood to endure him a minute longer than was necessary. She paid him from the purse Edwin had given her for this express purpose, took the two books the merchant had brought in exchange, and set out for the guild.

On her way there, she decided that she might as well take a peek and see just what the object of Edwin's mysterious research was; her curiosity was definitely piqued by the day's earlier events.

She sat down on some crates conveniently standing nearby, and started to leaf through the first book—or, better said, a set of loose parchments put together to form a book. Almost immediately, a familiar phrase caught her eye.

_The rivers of the Sword Coast shall run with blood._

She returned to the first page.

_The Lord of Murder shall perish; but in his wake he shall leave_

"—a score of mortal progeny," she whispered, closing the book. She did not need it to know what followed.

"Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps," she murmured softly to herself as, light-headed, she stood up and returned to the guild house.

**---**

"What's your interest in the Bhaalspawn, Edwin?"

The wizard looked up from the low shelf he was scanning and blinked slowly. "You—?"

"I've seen the documents. I fell," Imoen lied without compunction, completely unconcerned about the utter improbability of such an event, "and the book opened, and there were things there about Bhaal and the Children of Murder. Does this have anything to do with that wizard we've killed today? And your 'true undertaking' here? I can put two and two together, you know," she said and, for good measure, smiled.

"(She's so good at arithmetic it's frightening.) I— Why do you ask?"

Imoen shrugged. "I was only thinking… Have you heard? At breakfast? The Shadowmaster's—"

"—new pet boy is a Bhaalspawn, yes. (It may be a bit trouble reaching him where he's buried himself now, but Edwin Odesseiron is not a genius for nothing. And then— And then—)"

Suddenly, the wizard fell silent; Imoen shrugged and smiled again. "All right. In that case, I'm… sorry for taking your time."

**---**

Viconia had been right, and Sarevok, however unwittingly, had done her a favour, and whatever it was that Edwin wanted to do with the Bhaalspawn—kill them, or put them under that geas of his and force them to work for him, or whatever; she could think of a great many other possibilities, all of them unpleasant—all his attempts to achieve this would, hopefully, concentrate on her brother, and—

Viconia had been right: there was safety in anonymity; and Viconia had been right, too, that there must be others; although she had been actually speaking of other Children, and not—

Irenicus, and Edwin; and how many others?

**---**

Viconia was nowhere to be seen; pensive and miserable, Imoen wandered down to the ground floor and the common rooms of the guild in pursuit of company—and also, possibly, some work to take her mind off her problems; and that was how she witnessed how Mae'Var killed Embarl.

Mae'Var was playing catch-and-throw with his dagger as usual, overseeing Zyntris as the ratty man distributed the dispositions for the night. (It turned out that, this night, there was nothing for Imoen; but she should prepare for the night that followed: there was a large warehouse with a rather complicated ward system in the bridge district, near the Flagons—)

Mae'Var threw his dagger; the blade hit Embarl squarely in the middle of the forehead, penetrating the skull so easily that Imoen refused to believe that the dagger was not enchanted; the other man was instantly dead. He crashed the ground in a curious facsimile of the Red Wizard; and some banal impressions about how murder did not care the slightest for its victim's standing crossed Imoen's tired mind.

In the silence which fell, Mae'Var approached the body and recovered the dagger from it.

"Embarl was a traitor," he said matter-of-factly, without bothering to raise his voice. "He was planning to betray us to the vampire cabal. To disclose what wards protect us against Bodhi and her army."

_Bodhi? _Imoen thought.

"If he had succeeded in his plan," Mae'Var continued; and now, he did start to raise his voice, "we would all be undead soon. That; or simply dead. Remember that—and remember his end."

He paused. A clamour suddenly started to rise in the room, loud and enraged and growing louder and more enraged every second; Mae'Var looked over the faces of his thieves and, after waiting a single heartbeat more, finished:

"This is the end of all who oppose the Shadow Thieves."

**---**

They had taken Embarl's body outside and were playing with it.

Imoen refused to join; even though she knew that this set her outside the group; that with her refusal, she automatically put herself out in the open as the next target.

She remembered Renal Bloodscalp's voice.

"Mae'Var is a good thief, though I've never liked him. But he's ambitious. Too ambitious, possibly. I must know if he's planning to betray us to the other guild; but, for now, for a variety of reasons, I cannot act against him openly. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate his guild and discover whether there is any hint of his disloyalty. You must be as discreet as possible: his lieutenants are fanatically devoted to him, and will take offence at the mere thought of a spy within their ranks. And there is always the possibility that he is innocent…"

Tonight, Imoen decided; after tonight, her stay in Mae'Var's guild would be over.

Nothing was keeping her here any longer.


	10. II: Pawn to a Queen, 5

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**5**

It takes some nerve to calmly go to sleep in a guild of thieves whilst in possession of evidence incriminating the leader of said guild of treason; but one cannot partake in as many heists as Imoen had partaken in in the course of her short life without developing some measure of cheek, guts and poise.

Mae'Var, too, had guts and cheek, Imoen discovered; a lot.

The documents were precisely where she had expected them to be: in a closed safe box in Mae'Var's private chambers, where she managed to slip in the guild-master's absence. (Such absence was highly irregular; Imoen wondered whether she owed her luck to Viconia's presence.)

The documents were in code; but, since the decoding scheme was still attached to them (Imoen rolled her eyes when she saw this: for, though Mae'Var had guts and cheek, they did not necessarily go accompanied by brain, it appeared), it was easy to decipher what they were about. Imoen skimmed through them; and was shaken.

The documents were a complete list of all the wards Edwin maintained over the guild for its (and his own, she supposed) protection; a simple plan of the building, with all the traps which would be reset if the guild was under a direct assault; a complete list of all members of the guild, together with a brief physical description and the areas of weaponry in which they specialised.

Her own entry stated:

_Imoen (second name unknown): burglar, human, female, ca. 20 y.o. Pink hair, scars: right eye and cheek; left cheek and chin._

_Proficient in lighter swords and daggers. V. good w. staff and bow. Poisons, basic; magic, basic, improving. Dangerous._

"He got that part right, all right," Imoen muttered as she left the guild-master's rooms.

---

The building was large, dilapidated and painted a hideous shade of orange; the morning sun did little to hide its lack of appeal. It took Imoen an hour to get there, from Mae'Var's guild at the border of the Temple and Government Districts to the Athkatlan docks; and since she had set out at the break of dawn, it was now almost the time for breakfast in Mae'Var's guild. They would have noticed her absence by now; and if not by now, then soon.

She gave the guild's front her name and the purpose of her visit; and was almost instantly admitted into Renal Bloodscalp's presence.

The Bloodscalp was bald despite being not much older than thirty years of age; his head was graced with a wide, livid scar which he had earned years ago in some brawl and which had since that incident lent him his moniker. Clad in dark armour, though unarmed for the moment, he was alone in his office, sitting on top of a large oak-wood desk and examining some piece of parchment. "Well?" he said, looking up from the paper at the younger thief. "What do you have for me?"

Imoen followed suit and, also moving straight to business, said, "I have the evidence. Here."

She pulled the file from her backpack and offered it to the Bloodscalp; the man put away his previous reading and carefully took the parchment from her. "There is a key," Imoen added helpfully. "The last sheet."

The Bloodscalp looked at her inquisitively; looked at the parchment; and, after perusing it, said, "Yes. This is sufficient. This is precisely what I need."

He left the files on the desk and approached one of the paintings on the wall behind him. "Here," he said when, after a moment of manipulation, he turned around and presented Imoen with a small brown chamois leather bag. "Five thousand gold in diamonds, just as agreed. And now," he smiled a crooked smile at the girl, "only one question remains. Are you coming with us to deal with Mae'Var and his chums? I understand that you have become quite the wizard since our previous meeting. That is good; the guild will need a mage once the transfer of power is effected. If you agree, it will be one matter less for me to deal with."

Imoen blinked. "I'm not sure if I'm the best person for this," she said, slightly hesitantly. "To tell the truth, I'm still very much an apprentice." Seeing the Bloodscalp's suddenly blank expression, she added, "But to deal with Mae'Var? Sure, I'll go. A traitor of the Shadow Thieves does not deserve to live," she added with equanimity.

Renal Bloodscalp relaxed and nodded. "It is heartening to hear such sentiments; and doubly so from a new face in our ranks. Wait downstairs while I gather my people."

Imoen left Renal's office, went down the stairs which led back to the ground floor of the building, walked out of the main door of the guild, in one large gulp swallowed an entire oil of speed and ran.

---

She was still running when she entered Mae'Var's guild; flying more than running when she covered the first flight of stairs, to the floor where Mae'Var and Zyntris and Anishai and Mae'Var's guards lived; stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the second staircase by Viconia's voice:

"She is not here, abbil."

Imoen blinked: this was, apparently, a day for nasty surprises—and carefully came up a few steps more, just enough to let her peek into the laboratory.

Viconia was standing with her back to Imoen, dressed in dark leather and in a pose the girl unequivocally classified as seductive—although, she had to admit, what pose of Viconia was not? And just what did it matter, anyway, anymore?

And then, the priestess said, "Can't you use your magic to divine where she has gone, jaluk?" and things suddenly became ever-so-slightly brighter and better.

She leaned out to take a better look. Edwin was sitting by the flask-covered worktable where they prepared the potions, rubbing his right eyebrow absent-mindedly with a glum look on his face. "No," he said miserably, "I can't. She's simply… gone. Taken all her things and gone. (Didn't even wait to eat breakfast—)"

Imoen suddenly remembered why she had returned to Mae'Var's guild. "Hey," she said, coming up the last few stairs, and immediately felt a bit warmer and happier still on seeing the surprise on Edwin's and Viconia's faces. "Hey! I… Er. Renal Bloodscalp wants to kill you, Edwin," she said, deciding that it was not the best time to tell the whole story behind the sudden announcement; or, possibly, behind missed breakfasts. There was little time enough as it was. _Half an hour, most, if they don't teleport… but if they did, they'd be here already,_ she was calculating as she expected the inevitable questions.

None came; instead, Edwin grew as red as his robes and asked, with clear annoyance and in a high-pitched whine, "He does? (That… swindling, double-crossing, backstabbing monkey!)"

It was Viconia, not Imoen, who eventually broke the silence which fell. "Jaluk," she said in a virulently mellifluent voice, "Correct Viconia if she is wrong, but the phrasing you have just employed appears to imply that you have had previous dealings with this—Bloodscalp—persona."

"Er… yes." Under the drow's gaze, the short Red Wizard grew, if possible, even shorter and redder.

"And that he may, indeed, have a reason to want to kill you," Viconia mercilessly pressed on.

"Er… possibly."

Amused, the drow went in for the kill. "Can you elaborate why? Given how Imoen, here, has apparently taken a lot of trouble just to warn you…"

Edwin shot a desperate look at Imoen. "I may have forged some papers…"

"_May_ have?" Imoen exploded suddenly. "_May_ have? _Forged?_ Some _papers?_" She shook her head: this simply wasn't happening. This could not be happening.

Suddenly, she blinked and shook her head again. "But it wasn't your writing," she said. "It wasn't your writing. I know your writing, and this wasn't it."

Beside them, Viconia was looking from the one of them to the other with a curious expression on her face; and Edwin replied, with traces of his usual arrogance back in his voice. "Of course it wasn't my writing. It was the hand I'm using when I'm writing Mae'Var. (How stupid would it be if I—)"

"The hand you're using—" Imoen repeated, dumbstruck. Somehow, all the calculations about relative speeds, times of passage through Athkatla's morning traffic and the such suddenly lost importance.

Edwin sighed. "Mae'Var is illiterate. Smart—for a monkey," he admitted with visible reluctance, "but illiterate. Can't read, can't write, can't learn to do either. Anishai and Zyntris have been covering for him for years; and when I turned up, they, (of course), made me write the correspondence. Therefore, when Renal approached with his offer—"

"Renal?" Imoen asked, grasping on the one thread familiar to her.

"Renal manages the part of Athkatla which belongs to Aran Linvail. 'Manages' is the key word here; it is a position of great prestige, but little else. He wanted a guild of his own; and he almost got it after Mae'Var's unsuccessful coup—"

"And what did you want, Edwin?" Imoen interrupted, feeling oddly light-headed all over again. "Let me guess: less work and more money? More time for your true undertaking, right? And you'd get them, too… Except that I appeared, and now Renal has reconsidered," she finished darkly. "He thinks that I'd be sufficient as the guild wizard. One loose tie cut. One matter less for him to deal with." _Five thousand gold for a simple break-in, _she thought. _Five thousand gold…_

Viconia was still looking at the two humans oddly. "Can someone explain to me just what is the subject of this conversation?" she asked cautiously when she judged that Imoen had finished.

Imoen looked at the drow unhappily. "He forged documents framing Mae'Var into treason and left them for me to find in his safe—"

"I didn't know that you would be the one who'd find them!" Edwin protested. "(Embarl, yes. Always skulking around, that one. But not she.)"

"—and I've gone and delivered them straight into Renal Bloodscalp's hands," Imoen continued over Edwin's objections. "And Renal's coming here to kill Mae'Var. And Edwin. And, I suppose, now also me," she added as the unpleasant thought occurred to her.

"Ah. I see. And—asking out of pure curiosity—what do you propose to do about it, abbil?"

The question was still directed at Imoen; but it was Edwin who replied, "Leave, of course. (What kind of a question is that?)"

Imoen turned to the wizard angrily. "_Leave_?!"

Edwin blinked, clearly surprised by the suddenness of her reaction. "Yes, leave. Whichever simian wins, given the war with the vampires, Linvail will be forced to retain him as the guild-master. But even if (which is possible, however unlikely) Mae'Var wins, I'd rather not stay to learn what he does to me—us—when he finds out. (Has she already forgotten yesterday's little show? Unbelievable.)"

"And where will you go, jaluk?" Viconia's amused voice interrupted the muttering. "The Shadow Thieves will chase you like drow chase escaped slaves. Where will you find protection? In the vampires' cold crypts?"

Imoen, engrossed in musings of her own, paid the woman no heed. "Mae'Var," she said slowly as she eventually came out of her trance. "He's innocent, isn't he?"

"(A rather unorthodox word to use about the leader of a guild of thieves)," Edwin muttered.

Imoen ignored the wizard again. She slumped to the ground, suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of her backpack, and, stating a fact rather than asking, said, "I messed up, didn't I."

Edwin shrugged. "Mae'Var's a thief. He had it coming to himself. (What's she on about? It isn't even as if Mae'Var is a particularly pleasant man.)"

"Well, I'm a thief, too!" Imoen yelled out from the ground. "And Mae'Var took me in! And didn't treat me badly! And he even let me choose what I wanted to do!" For some reason, this little detail became, somehow, important right now.

"(Because she's, apparently, some kind of thieving prodigy.) So what?! Mae'Var's downstairs. Go and tell him you've betrayed him, if you wish; and if he doesn't kill you, die by his side when Renal attacks. (Or go and explain kindly to Aran Linvail that you messed up and now his two heads of guilds are going to kill each other. He may even not kill you, either.)"

Imoen looked at the wizard and said calmly, "Edwin. You are a genius. And you are coming with me."

The wizard paled. "You are not serious. (Does she realise what he's going to do to me?)," he said even as Viconia asked, "Are you really sure you want to do this, abbil?"

Imoen knew what the priestess was really asking about; but she was smiling as she stood up from the ground. "Yes, I am. I think."

Viconia looked at Imoen seriously. "Then, abbil, I am coming with you. And you, jaluk," she turned to Edwin, and there was now steel in her dark eyes, "are coming, too. If the female has a death wish, that is her own choice; but I cannot help but notice that you are the more guilty party here. Pshaw!" she snorted contemptuously and shook her shapely head. "This is what comes of males trying to act above their natural station."

In her head, Imoen calculated the time: some ten minutes more. Perhaps as much.

---

When Edwin teleported them to the hideous orange building Imoen would much rather never again see in her life, to meet a man (or, she shuddered, men) she would rather not ever meet again, there were knots in her stomach; but—

Consequences, she thought. That was the word: consequences. She had unwittingly betrayed a man who had treated her fairly; and she could even escape the consequences of her act. Possibly. Except that how would this make her feel?

She looked at Edwin, walking by her side like a man sentenced to death—which, in a sense, he was; because she remembered Sarevok's face and body, beaten to a pulp. She did not wish this on Edwin. No. If, after he told his part and cleared her name, he managed to open a dimension door and escape; and then, managed to elude both the Shadow Thieves and the Red Wizards chasing him—she wished him all the best in his new life; that he might go on and live to betray someone else.

Somehow, this knowledge that Edwin had betrayed a man wittingly; and for no other reason than greed—cooled Imoen's head towards the man in a way even her knowledge that he probably hunted Bhaalspawn had not; and so, as she walked through the half-deserted corridors of the thieves' guild which Aran Linvail called his own and Renal Bloodscalp managed for him, she was acutely aware of some odd, sweet brand of cruelty which had insinuated its way into her life since her escape from the madman's dungeon. Possibly, she thought, it was the cruelty of maturity. Of choices, and consequences.

---

The three of them: Edwin and she side by side, with Viconia trailing curiously behind them, passed through the corridors of the surface guild to the door behind which, Imoen knew, stretched Aran Linvail's subterranean kingdom; and then, through the door.

She found herself in a small, badly-lit place with several tables, some chairs and a shelf full of various spirits; and also, a single man, dirty and unkempt. It was, perhaps, a testimony of the Shadowmaster's hold over his people that the man was not drunk, and more even: not in any way smelling of alcohol.

"Hey there," the man said. "Who ye be? And what ye be wantin' of Cuchul?"

"Nothing," Imoen replied, honestly and with a smile. "We want to see Aran Linvail." Behind herself, she heard Edwin whimper slightly.

The guard snorted. "Good one. He be wantin' to see ye, too?"

"He'll want to when he learns what we have to tell him," Imoen replied, trying to sound level, as Jaheira would.

The man shook his head. "Well, in that case, ye know what ye gotta do," he said, smiled nastily and rubbed together the fingers of his right hand before Imoen's nose.

The girl sighed. "How much?"

"The usual. Twenty thousan' gold."

"_Twenty thousand gold?"_ Imoen asked; and, instantly dropping all pretence of Jaheira-like respectability, retorted, "You're putting me on."

The man shook his head. "Nay. This here be the usual fee for meetin' the Shadowmaster uninvited. Go home, lass," he added, not unkindly. "What could a slip like you be wantin' to tell Aran Linvail that he ain't be knowin' already?"

At this, Imoen's small reserves of patience finally came to an end. "I could be wanting to tell him that Renal Bloodscalp framed Mae'Var on false pretences and is right now attacking his guild," she hissed out angrily.

"Is he?" she heard an amused voice, whirled around, and saw Sarevok.

The man was looking almost exactly the same as when she had last seen him; unarmed and without armour; though his silken clothes were this time not white with golden dragons, but uniform honey gold. He was standing not five steps from them all, with his hands behind his back and a vague amusement on his face; and Imoen, in passing, wondered how she could have possibly missed his arrival on the scene—at least, until she completed her head-to-toe inspection of her brother's apparel, and noticed the one garment exempt from the colour scheme: a pair of soft, noiseless, dark-brown boots she would almost kill for; a thief's boots, and a rich man's boots, almost certainly worth a small fortune.

He was also bathed in the scent of myrrh; and, if anything, that scent made Imoen instantly conscious that Edwin's robe, though blood-red and resplendent, was also torn in one place and mended in two; and that she herself was sweaty and wearing only linen under her armour. In that scent, only Viconia still somehow managed to look presentable; and for that, if for anything, Imoen was grateful to the drow.

He was, finally, watching Imoen herself closely; studying her almost as if she were a work of art, piece by piece and part by part: her necklace, her ring, her hair, her clothes and her armour; her old dagger and her new sword. What was he seeing? she wondered; but she did not ask; they were not alone.

And, in any case, soon the scrutiny was over; with a brief, calculating look, Sarevok brushed over both Imoen's companions, stopping first on Edwin (who was now deathly pale, and wide-eyed, and looked as if he was ready to do everything and anything if only someone would, please, take the other man out of his presence), and then on Viconia (who was quite amused and held Sarevok's gaze steadily with the long-lashed her own), and said, "Mitsu."

From the shadows behind Imoen, a halfling emerged; and the girl felt her eyes widen and narrow in turn in surprise. The woman had been directly behind her; if she had decided to attack, Imoen would not have stood a chance.

Sarevok, meanwhile, was telling the halfling, "I want you, Pelanna, Arkanis and Haz here in five minutes. You," he turned to Imoen and her company. "All of you. Follow me."

With that, and leaving behind a waft of sweet frankincense, he went past Imoen, and into a patch of wall directly behind Cuchul; and the girl, after a brief moment of hesitation, followed into the corridor behind the illusion; and was herself, in turn, followed by a clearly fascinated drow and a mortally scared Thayvian wizard.

---

He left them in the antechamber; the small, cosy, chestnut-brown place with the thick rug, thick tapestries, a statue and an enchanted light she remembered all too well from her previous visit here; and, without closing the door behind himself, entered the Shadowmaster's private sanctuary.

Imoen cast an askew look at Edwin and Viconia. She was wondering what they were making of the scene which had only just played out; but neither spoke a word to her. Edwin was muttering softly to himself; suddenly, he shuddered and, with a few quick syllables, cast a spell of stone-skins over himself. Viconia was now watching Imoen; still with something much akin to laughter—though, curiously, blended with no small measure of admiration—in her dark eyes.

In the end, the drow smacked her lips. "He's a challenge," she said. "That's good. I like challenges."

Men's voices reached them from within the chamber; too faint to discern what was being argued. For a moment, two silhouettes showed in the opening; and, for a second, Imoen imagined that she was looking at Aran Linvail again; or, better said, that the blond, genial and dangerous man was again looking at her.

And then, suddenly, it was all over; no questions had been asked, and no answers demanded; and they were again following Sarevok, this time armed, though still without armour, down the long corridor to the place where they were awaited by Mitsu, and Pelanna, and Arkanis, and Haz.

---

For the third time in two days, Imoen experienced the brief discontinuity of reality which accompanies walking through a dimension door; for again was she standing in front of Mae'Var's guild, though this time, it was not Edwin, but Haz, Aran Linvail's own wizard, who had brought them over to this place.

And this time, from within the guild sounds of fighting reached their ears: apparently, Renal Bloodscalp had attacked and was now effecting his transfer of power; and, equally apparently, Mae'Var's people had decided to fight against it. The much-vaunted wards failed to protect the guild-master from a stab in the back from within his own mob's ranks.

Sarevok listened for a moment to the noise; a vague, unconscious smile played on his lips. "Alive," he said at length to the two men and two women who accompanied him, ignoring Imoen and her company completely. "I want them alive. Especially the Bloodscalp."

And having said that, and then, quite unsubtly, kicked open the door to the guild—he disappeared within the building.

Imoen waited for a moment after Haz, the last of Sarevok's own, entered; and then, looked at her companions, unsheathed her own sword and followed her sibling into the fray.

---

Sarevok's languid orders meant, apparently, that as long as the thieves within were not killed, anything was acceptable; and so, like he, his cohorts separated the fighters with brutality matched only by their efficiency.

Haz cast a divination spell which instantly revealed those thieves who, by guile or magic, had managed to make themselves invisible to their opponents; then, he started to fire at the combatants with magic missiles to attract their attention. Mitsu ran from man to man and from woman to woman, cutting the tendons under their knees, making them lose their balance together with their mobility; Imoen thought darkly that all those healing potions she had prepared for Anishai's mission would, after all, come to be of use. Arkanis and Pelanna did not bother with even this much refinement; they were simply knocking the fighters out: he, with a club, she—on seeing that, Imoen blinked and did a double take—with the edge of her bare hand.

Sarevok himself was less subtle still: he plodded his way through the guild, physically tearing the pairs and groups of fighters apart; throwing those who resisted away from himself and into the walls and the furniture; leaving behind a wake of unconscious, barely alive bodies. In the end, not few minutes passed between Imoen entered a battleground and the fight came to a standstill; and battle cries turned into a chorus of moans of pain.

There was blood, sprayed generously on the floor and the furniture; and the intoxicating smell of fresh blood in the air; and there were, too, the dead; perhaps ten all on both sides; and, among their number, Zyntris and Mae'Var.

Mae'Var was lying on his back on the floor of the common room, with several arrows in his chest, a look of surprise on his face, and an unthrown dagger slack in his hand. He had managed to stand up before he had been killed; that, and nothing more. Zyntris had not done even that much; the cutpurse's body was spread out on the wooden bench by the long table, with the handle of a throwing dagger sticking out of his heart.

Imoen halted in her tracks. _I really did mess up_, she thought miserably.

---

Sarevok was standing next to her, so close that they were almost touching each other; but he was still paying her no heed; her, or the bodies. Instead, he was watching Anishai.

Anishai was also in the back of the room, across the table from Zyntris' body, with her back pressed against the wall and her short, dark blade poised defensively in front of her. She was tense and alert, and clearly searching for something in the thin air around her; and Imoen suddenly understood. _Renal. The Bloodscalp is here, somewhere._

And then, Anishai slashed with her sword at a spot of air which, to Imoen, looked no different than any other one; and followed the feint with a kick; and thus, swept Renal Bloodscalp, yelping in pain and suddenly visible again, off his feet.

"Enough, Anishai. You won. But he is mine, and the Shadowmaster's."

Sarevok's voice cut suddenly and sharply through the background noise; and Imoen cringed slightly.

Anishai, however, was unmoved. "You will not take my revenge," she said coldly, without taking her eyes away from the man at her feet; and, for good measure, kicking his sword out of his hand.

"I must," Sarevok replied simply, approaching the assassin and her quarry closer. "I would rather not kill you to do so."

"We were loyal. What 'proofs' he has are fake."

"Your master knows this. That is why he sent me." Renal, Imoen noticed, was trying to use the distraction to stand up.

With a swift kick to the stomach, Anishai brought the Bloodscalp back to the floor; and having done so, said, "You? Why you? This is a matter for a Shadow's blade."

Imoen frowned. _Are they actually arguing—_

"Then give me your sword, and let's have it over with," Sarevok, now clearly irritated, interrupted his sister's stream of thoughts. "This is more than one guild's business: he betrayed also his own men, when he sent them against you."

_And you would know all about how to do this, wouldn't you? _Imoen thought as the memory of a man by the name of Koveras offering his sister a ring in a place called Candlekeep crossed her mind; and instantly disappeared, as the living Sarevok next to her finished, "Be reasonable, Anishai. You will live."

For at that, another, more recent, memory superseded the previous one; and a low hiss ran through the crowd which, Imoen only now noticed, had gathered in the meantime behind her. Edwin was there, and Viconia, too, standing right behind the wizard and not ceasing to be entertained; and some of those thieves who had survived the brawl conscious and unharmed; or, perhaps, had healed themselves already. The show was, evidently, too good to miss.

And at least some of the gathered thieves must know something of Anishai which Imoen only suspected; because once Sarevok was finished speaking, a sudden tremor shook the assassin's body. Swiftly and wordlessly, and with vacant eyes, she reversed the grip on her sword, and offered it hilt-first to the man; and, once he took it, still without a word, she entered the crowd of thieves and started to make her way through it and out of the room. To Imoen's surprise, in a rustle of dark leather, Viconia followed.

But the girl might well be the only one who noticed this; the eyes of most were still concentrated on her brother. Sarevok slowly, contemplatively, put his own sword away onto the long table and weighed Anishai's blade in his right hand. Then, he crooked his head and, sounding rather amused, told the man on the ground, "Stand up."

The Bloodscalp did not move; Sarevok casually kicked the wooden bench standing on his side of the table, overturning it; and, leaning indolently against the table, leaving himself quite clear in the open, repeated, this time not amused at all, "Stand up, Bloodscalp. Or do I need to help you?"

Imoen suddenly decided that she had had about enough of what was going to happen; of that man in the dark armour on the floor, and that other man, golden-eyed and in honey-gold clothes, towering over the first like some harsh, unforgiving sun towering over a shadow. She bore Renal Bloodscalp no good will; but what was coming was so… Sarevok.

But the crowd around her thickened in the meantime; it seemed as though almost all the thieves who had survived, Renal's and Mae'Var's alike, had poured into the room. And so, unable to pass through the jam-packed rows of onlookers, she watched how the Bloodscalp, cheered and egged on by the crowd, got to his feet; and, unhindered in any way by her brother, picked up his own blade; Anishai's one's twin.

"Aran Linvail is well aware how advancement through our ranks is achieved," he said in a harsh, discordant voice. "What makes this time different? That we are at war? This is the best time to gain power; as you should know from your own failure in the north."

A few hoots behind Imoen meant that, clearly, someone there was having a much better time that she had of the scene; Sarevok was smiling coldly at the scarred man. "No," he said. "What makes this time different is that your master does not wish it."

Now, Renal himself also smiled a crooked smile. "And, unlike you, I do not have the assets necessary to bail me out?"

Catcalls yet again; and Imoen in her first-row place noticed how Sarevok's eyes glimmered for just the shortest moment; but, in the end, her brother answered calmly, "Yes. I am useful to him. Unlike you."

He was not yet finished speaking when Renal struck out, bringing his sword in an upwards arc and at the other man's unprotected abdomen. But the blade failed to penetrate through the thin clothes; and Imoen, after all her recent training, instruction and life's vicissitudes, quickly reached the correct and a most unhappy conclusion regarding the reason why.

The Bloodscalp came to the same deduction at almost the same instant. "You've magically shielded yourself, pervert!" he yelled out, moving a few steps back from the taller man.

"And you," Sarevok replied matter-of-factly, bringing Anishai's sword up at last, "have poison on your blade. Why do you complain? Did anyone here expect anything but a thieves' fight?"

At that, a wave of laughter rippled through the crowd behind Imoen; a few chosen epithets were sent towards the Bloodscalp; and the girl finally understood what her brother was doing.

Renal struck out again. _No, don't_, Imoen thought unhappily. _He'll kill you anyway, but…_

---

The two men were fighting: the first, clad in shadow as they all here were, and wielding a Shadow's dark, backstabbing blade; one of their pack and one to whom most of them here had even the morn of that day owed allegiance; and the second. The other and the stranger; an alien who had insinuated himself in their master's favour in a way many of them considered abhorrent, and now intruded upon thieves' own matters bathed in sweet scent and foolishly exposed—or, perhaps, on closer inspection, not so. So different from them all, as a ray of light piercing through the shadows: golden, exquisite, cruel and compelling; and all the more compelling for how much darker in his essence they suspected, or knew, he was than they were all.

_And you're even using Anishai's sword, _Imoen thought, _and not one of them thinks that your own is almost useless here. Too little space. All they are thinking is that you're using Anishai's sword, brother. A Shadow's blade for a Shadow's kill; but you're not a thief, are you, Sarevok? Even if you can make them think you are._

_But you can; and so, they will love you, and follow you, and congratulate themselves on their luck in having you with them; until, one day, you wear that spiky armour again, and close the faceguard again, and stop being charming…_

In all ways superior to his opponent; and arrogantly assured of his superiority in a way which can breed only dislike; unless, that is, it is the leader's of one's own pack—Sarevok fought the Bloodscalp; or, better said, toyed with him; for he had not yet once attacked himself, only parried the other man's increasingly desperate hacks. And, behind her back, Imoen felt the mood of the crowd change with each successful sidestep; and the crowd's favour shift, subtly yet inevitably, away from the familiar and former leader of the pack and towards the stranger and the pretender.

And then, Renal Bloodscalp stumbled; there was another ripple of laughter; and Imoen found further watching simply unbearable. "Finish him, you bastard!" she cried out. "Finish him. Just… save him the shame."

And perhaps her brother heard her desperate cry; or perhaps he decided to end the cat-and-mouse game of his own accord; for at that moment, he attacked; and, one sword-thrust later, the Bloodscalp was, plainly, dead.

A round of applauding calls surfaced from the crowd of thieves; but it died promptly as Sarevok abruptly turned around and, coming a few steps closer, faced the mob.

This was a Sarevok Imoen had ever barely glimpsed but all too well remembered, tall, and imposing, and with an unholy fire burning in his eyes; and easily commanding the attention of every soul in the room as he started to speak—in almost the same place where Mae'Var had spoken the night before:

"Fools!" he sneered contemptuously, sweeping across all faces in the room with one look; a small murmur of indignant disgruntlement started in the crowd, and was quickly silenced as Sarevok spoke on, "Pathetic little cretins! Are you not aware what your masters' petty game cost you?! Today, two guilds will end the day without their leaders. Tonight, the vampires will think you weak. And rightly so."

He let the mob mull over this for a moment, while sending them one again scathing look; and, after that, raised his voice still and pounded on, "Tonight, they will attack; tonight, when they attack, you must prove them wrong. Tonight, all guilds will be fully staffed and locked. There will be no thieves out on business tonight, and—" Another pause; another look; and then, finally, another sneer. "There will be no vendettas over this hysteria. Ever. Anishai! Vaelag!"

There was a brief pause as, this time in complete silence, the crowd parted and let through Anishai and a gnome Imoen did not recognise. When they finally entered the empty space, Sarevok said, still not lowering his voice, "Until the Shadowmaster makes his decision, you are acting guild-masters. Clean this mess and prepare the guilds for the assault. You will be told when your master chooses to speak with you. Mitsu!"

At that, the halfling appeared out of thin air, again not few steps from Imoen. (The girl wrinkled her nose: she must really learn to see through the invisible, as Anishai or Haz could.)

Sarevok ordered the little woman, "Tell your master of all that has transpired here. Haz will take you."

And, having said that, and, with one brisk move, returned Anishai's blade to her, he took his own large sword from the table; and, still in a cloud of myrrh and frankincense, though now with clothes rather ruined by splattered blood, he completely ignored Imoen and threw a biting golden look at Marisha, who was standing next to his sister and in his path.

"Where are you going?" Anishai asked, with brow furrowed by confound.

"I," replied Sarevok in a tone nothing less than regal, "am going for a walk."

The bemused woman echoed, "A walk?"

"Indeed," Sarevok replied without changing his tone. "A walk. May it remain understood that I will not take kindly to any, however well-intentioned, efforts to escort me. Out of my way, fool," he barked at Marisha; who, this time, did not fail to remove herself from the Bhaalspawn's path.

And with that, and leaving behind a baffled Anishai and thirty other thieves, Imoen's brother left the room.

Behind, his sister snickered. _He came, he saw, he conquered, and now he's going for a walk_, she thought, watching Anishai come out of her bewilderment and start giving out her first orders as a guild-mistress. _Deal with it._

---

She had done the right thing, except that it turned out to be completely the wrong thing, and—

She lived; and so did Viconia; and Edwin. Aran Linvail didn't kill her; Sarevok, somehow, didn't kill her, either; and because both the Bloodscalp and—a twinge of guilt and shame crossed her heart again—Mae'Var was dead, and because her brother wished it, there would be no vendettas over this hysteria. And Edwin, she had to admit, however pushed and prodded, had, in the end, accompanied her to an almost certain and a very painful death.

Nonetheless, it was high time she left the guild. She had overstayed her welcome as it was.

She went to the top floor of the building, where she had left the backpack with her things when Edwin had teleported them into the guild in the Docks. She was busy manipulating the straps by the bag—there was some small difference between their lengths, and she wanted to correct it before setting out on the road again—when she heard the, by now familiar, shuffle of robes on the stairs.

"We have nothing to talk about, Edwin," she said.

The spell of holding hit her from the back, as surely and precisely as any thief's blade.

"No," she heard. "We don't. (I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…)"

It was peculiar how, as, frozen on her knees beside her backpack, she was listening to Edwin Odesseiron chant the now-familiar incantation of the Finger of Death, her thoughts did not really differ all that much from that desperate cry she had earlier that day uttered at her brother.

_Do it. Do it, if you must. But, please, don't say you're sorry. Save us both the shame._


	11. II: Pawn to a Queen, 6

**Siblings**

**Part II: Pawn to a Queen**

**6**

The magic around her dispelled, abruptly and without any warning; and because it did, when her hand found its way to her dagger and took hold of it even as Imoen herself rose from her crouch, and whirled about, and used her momentum to propel herself forward at the man standing right behind her—the dagger stroke true and, unstopped by Edwin's layers of stone-skins; for they were there no more—pierced the man's heart.

And then, Imoen gave out a loud, inhuman cry: for, suddenly, Edwin Odesseiron began to dissolve on her eyes, first slowly, and then faster and faster, until he was nothing but a cloud of dust, dancing around her and shimmering lightly in the sunlight which filtered into the room from the outside.

And then, even the dust disappeared; and there was nothing.

---

There was Viconia.

The drow was standing at the top of the stairs, with an incredulous look on her dark, handsome face. "He—" she started to speak; and, then, speechless, fell silent.

"He was a brother," Imoen replied, sheathing her dagger; and then, turned around, and started making her way through the stacks of parchment on the floor towards the table Edwin used to use as his desk.

Viconia followed her into the room. "I—"

"You," Imoen interrupted the woman without turning back, "are a priestess of Shar."

Viconia was still following her. "I am," she admitted, "but what are you talking about, abbil?"

Imoen circled the desk and started to leaf through the papers on it. Then, suddenly, she stopped and looked over the table at Viconia again; this time straight into the woman's dark eyes.

"You even tried to tell me, didn't you?" she asked flatly. "You tried to tell me, except that I replied what I replied, and you decided that it was too—what? Elegant? Entertaining? Simply tempting? After all," she added, "there is no despair like… like which follows a lost new hope, a new… new love, maybe. Even. Isn't there? And he, when all's said and done, was only a man, a scrawny, impressionable jaluk, wasn't he?" She could not help the grimace which now crossed her face; the grimace, or the tears that followed. She sniffed and wiped them out with two short moves of her thumb. "Either way, you won."

Viconia was still looking at her oddly. "You are making no sense, abbil—" she started to speak.

"Aren't I?" Imoen interrupted. "Aren't I? When did you tell him? This morning, right? When I was gone? You wouldn't. You would tell him later, much later, when a touch of incest would perhaps add a bit of seasoning to the whole delicious mix, wouldn't it? Except that I was gone, and so you went and told him. Told him even how to find it out, maybe, because he wouldn't believe you otherwise, I guess, he was like this. And you let him do the rest, because he was an idiot, a stupid and lovable, but an idiot, and—"

Suddenly, she broke off, blinked and bit her lip. The tears really had better stop flowing now.

"Abbil—" Viconia was imploring in the background; but Imoen ignored her and racked her brains again. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into their right places. "He would kill me, or I would kill him when he attacked me, and I would never know why he wanted to kill me, only that he suddenly wanted to— Except that I would, but then, you didn't know that we dissolve into these tiny little shimmering shards when we die, did you? We don't talk about this to everyone, after all— But," satisfied with this solution, she returned to the place where she had broken her narrative, "I left, and came back, and you told him to go meet Sarevok with me, and he wanted to see Sarevok, too, I guess, and—"

There were still tearstains, stubborn, stupid, silly tearstains, on the parchment lying on the desk. Imoen lifted her head and looked at the ceiling above. It was all blurred.

She turned her head slowly: first right, and then left. "It really didn't have to be this way. It really didn't. Siblings really don't have to kill each other. Even us."

She lowered her head and looked straight at Viconia again. "They don't," she insisted, because it suddenly seemed to her that the priestess did not believe her. "Me and Irene, we worked just fine. But you told him, and he was a paranoid idiot—"

"Abbil—" Viconia repeated; but Imoen interrupted her once again. "Oh, please," she said in a voice suddenly tired and exhausted. "You don't have to do this, you know? After all, you won."

"I… won?" Viconia asked cautiously.

"Yes," Imoen replied sensibly. "I lost my sister, I lost my friends, I lost whatever my home actually was, I lost someone I hoped would like me, just a bit, and now I lost a brother I didn't know I had. Check and mate. The game is over. You win. I lose."

Across the desk, the face of the priestess suddenly smoothed out: concern disappeared from her eyes, and her voice lost all traces of hesitation as suavely, silkily, Viconia purred, "It is accommodating that you acknowledge your loss so easily, abbil."

A small, vague sort of smile suddenly played on Imoen's lips. "It is no use denying the obvious, as my brother once told me… I lost. Should have watched my back better in a thieves' guild, I guess. Should've known better than to save the life of a drow, perhaps," she snorted.

She crooked her head and smiled wider through the tear-filled eyes. "Tell me, Viconia," she said. "You have a drow proverb for everything. What's the one for this occasion?"

Viconia, this time sincerely nonplussed by the girl's behaviour, blinked, frowned, considered and said, "_Nindyn_—"

Imoen attacked.

---

_Nindyn vel'uss kyorl nind ratha thalra elghinn dal lil alust. Those who watch their backs meet death from the front. _The vocalised, silently-cast flame arrow Imoen set out at the Sharran served, at best, as a momentary distraction; but that was enough. It hit Viconia in the chest, burning through the dark leather of her armour; the woman took a step back, more out of surprise than of actual hurt, staring at the spell's trail in disbelief.

This first moment of surprise passed quickly; and the woman started chanting her own incantation, begging Shar to help her in this time of need; but she never finished. By this time, Imoen was already by her.

The priestess' armour might possibly withstand the wild, furious, almost random jabs of the girl's pink sword long enough; but Imoen, though barely, was still lucid enough to realise the futility of her attacks. She backed off a step, hissed angrily and, half blindly and moving half by instinct, reached deep within her self; to the place she had visited once before, where she had healed herself.

There was power there; the power which was hers by right of her blood and her heritage.

She reached for it and took it; and almost immediately felt how stronger and faster and tougher she was becoming as she drew upon it. The armour would not be a problem now.

And, as she claimed the power of her dead sire as her own, Imoen's head slowly started to clear of its useless, desperate rage; her blood cooled and her control of her own actions returned. Now intent on her victim with a sort of concentration she had never managed before, she started to measure her blows with lethal efficiency and precision; the way she had been taught to deal them during her life on the road; and later, during Anishai's lessons.

The subclavian. The femoral. The carotid.

The aorta.

---

She was half-kneeling, half-crouching on the floor, surrounded by paper and parchment scattered during the fight when Viconia and she, chasing after the drow, fell into some of Edwin's meticulously ordered stacks of documents and scrolls.

There was blood on her hands and blood on the parchment: a spray of tiny droplets of blood, and a giant puddle of blood where Viconia—Viconia's body—was lying.

Her head felt heavy, and she felt tired and exhausted. She had never felt as tired and exhausted before after killing… or, perhaps she had, once; but if she had, she did not remember.

She combed through her hair with her blood-covered fingers, and only later realised what she did. Her hair would be all glued together later.

Then, she blinked, breathed deeply, and, graceful like a young cat, rose; like a young cat sheathes its claws sheathing her sword. She made a few steps towards the chair standing behind Edwin's desk; faltered when she was almost there; with one last effort, reached the chair and sat down on it heavily, with her head bowed low, her hands on her forehead, her fingers in her hair, and her eyes closed.

A minute passed in unbroken silence.

Then, Imoen took a deep breath, straightened, opened her dry, barren eyes and said, tiredly, "You can come out of the shadows, brother."

A moment later, a tall figure appeared in the short corridor which led to the room which had once been hers. "How did you know I was here?" Sarevok asked calmly, clinically, as though out of only impersonal interest.

Imoen smiled absently in her brother's general direction. "Not much here smells of myrrh and frankincense, brother… You saved my life."

Sarevok shrugged, and leaning casually against the wall of the corridor, replied, "No. I merely gave you a fighting chance, sister. All the killing was done by you, and of your choosing only."

Imoen nodded slowly, acknowledging the truth of the statement.

"The game is not over yet, though," Sarevok said suddenly.

Imoen slowly focused her sight on her brother. "Of course it isn't," she said. "It's not over until one of us remains alive, is it?"

"At most," Sarevok continued, ignoring her comment, "a pawn reached the end of a board— Tell me, sister: how did it feel? To murder?"

There was polite disinterest rather than true curiosity in her brother's voice; nonetheless, a dreamy look crossed Imoen's face.

"It felt great. Wonderful." She grimaced; the words were all wrong—and added, "It was perfect. Exhilarating. Better than lovemaking; better than… anything, really. It was…"

Suddenly, she found the right turn of phrase. "It was the feel of doing the one thing in life you were born to do," she said, with total conviction.

Sarevok was still watching her from his station in the corridor. "Yes, it was, wasn't it?" he agreed, and Imoen knew that her brother knew what she had felt, exactly; that this was how he had relished spitting Gorion on his blade.

"And now," she said with crystal clarity, "you will tell me that we are now even. Now, finally, at last, even. Murderers, both."

At that, the man straightened and, with a few long steps, crossed into the room, crushing the delicate parchment under his feet; Imoen watched as he stepped easily over Viconia's body, touched a book on Edwin's desk, and, crooking his head, said, pensively, "Actually, no."

Imoen, surprised, turned her head towards her brother; Sarevok continued slowly, "I was about to tell you, sister, that—"

A brief pause; and then, the man continued, suddenly amused, "—for your own sake, I hope that you learn to use your powers, and use them sparingly."

Imoen blinked; and this time, turned her whole body to face the man. "Aren't you a bit of a hypocrite to preach the importance of temperance, Sarevok? You of the unholy wrath?"

Sarevok, who was still far too amused for his own good in Imoen's opinion, replied lightly across the desk, "Why? Am I not the best example of what happens when you let yourself be played for a fool?"

Then, suddenly, all amusement disappeared from his face, replaced by a short, foul grimace of disgust; and suddenly, Imoen remembered a dream she had once had. "She did call you a wayward one," she said.

She felt the full force of her brother's attention on her again as he dodged her charge and asked, "She?"

"Irene," Imoen replied mechanically; and suddenly wondered why she did.

Sarevok's face tensed into a mask. "So, the dreams have started, too… Of course. What do you think you will be dreaming of tonight, sister?" he asked suddenly, speaking as though he was still making small talk; and Imoen, even though she had promised herself not to let her brother get to her, ever, paled.

_Don't worry, Imoen. He will come. Soon._

"No," she said, wide-eyed from sudden panic. "No. No—"

She looked at the floor. Viconia's blood had long stopped flowing and had started to clot into a dry layer over the parchments and papers.

"And yet," her brother's cruel voice taunted in the background, "you are mortal. You tire. You fall asleep. You dream. However you try, you will fall asleep… eventually."

Suddenly, the girl had enough. She pushed violently against the desk in front of her; the chair slid back slightly and, as she got up, tumbled behind her with a crash. "What's it to you?! What are you doing here, anyway? Have you come here to see us fight—"

"I have come here to kill our brother," Sarevok replied simply.

"Then what stopped you? You, too, found it more amusing to let me do the job?"

A shadow of irritation crossed the man's face. "Not amusing, as such. I merely thought that you had the first claim to him, given how he was attempting to kill you at the time. Was I wrong? Would you prefer that I have treated you like a child, incapable of sorting out her matters on her own? Would you prefer to owe your life to me now?"

Imoen swallowed the bile that suddenly amassed in her throat, and asked, "And now, what? Do _we_ fight? Or do we simply pretend that this meeting did not take place, and go on living as before?" She shook her head, and asked, desperately, "Why? Why aren't you killing me?"

Suddenly, Sarevok laughed. "It's eating you, isn't it? This would almost be a sufficient reason for me, sister. But," he added lightly, "there is another; and you are not without wit. Treat it as a challenge. Perhaps you will find it out on your own."

"Find it out?" Imoen asked defiantly. "Do you mean that I will have the chance to look for it?"

Her issue of a challenge was answered almost instantly. "Do you want it?"

Imoen considered; and then blinked, and shook her head, as if awakening from a different kind of a long, unpleasant dream.

Afoot, she could see Viconia's body over the bureau; she circled the desk yet one more time this day, and approached the prone figure slowly, constantly mindful that each move was bringing her also closer to her brother.

Viconia had been so beautiful in life, she thought suddenly; and instantly felt a hypocrite for thinking it. Then—again, in spite of the knowledge that she had no right to do so—she bent over the body and closed its eyes.

Bastard though he was, Sarevok was right about this one thing. All the killing here had been of Imoen's own choosing.

She, too, had told him the truth. It had felt good. It had really been the best moment of her life. But—yes; wasn't she the one preaching about choices, and consequences, not few hours earlier?

Suddenly, she felt utter disgust for herself.

She was still bent over the body, looking at the many jagged, uneven wounds in it—how many? she thought in passing: twenty? thirty?—when she started again to talk quietly to the man who was her brother and who was standing not two steps from her; slightly behind her and to the left. "'All trust is foolish,' as she would say. I don't trust you, Sarevok. I know that you are playing a game with me. I don't know what game, exactly, but… I call your bluff. Whatever your reason for letting me live will remain your own. I'm not interested."

She took a deep breath, and, not daring look away from the corpse lying in the pool of blood, slowly straightened. "But," she added, "you don't need to bait me with a challenge. Tell me, as you would tell Aran, or Anishai, or anyone you respected enough not to lie to and play with—if there's anyone like this at all—why, having decided to let me live, you have come here, and why we are having this conversation. Will you?"

A tense moment passed; at the end of which Imoen heard, "It is Bodhi. We must leave Athkatla as soon as possible if we are to reach Trademeet before nightfall."

Imoen risked a looked over her left shoulder; Sarevok had not moved a millimetre from his previous position. She turned around to face her brother, and, trying to keep her cool, said, "All right. That was rather straightforward, I admit. And you have certainly captured my attention, brother. More? I know who Bodhi is, by the way," she added.

Sarevok was still watching her lazily from the advantage of his height, entirely unmindful of the fact that they were within one another's personal space now. "I really doubt you do, sibling… A pawn has queened today," he said, nodding at the girl; in such a way that she could not possibly tell if his appreciation was mock or genuine. "But, as in any, there is a second Queen in this game. Bodhi is Irenicus' sister."

"She is," Imoen replied dryly. Somehow, this did not move her as she thought it perhaps should; this was, indeed, a day for nasty surprises. And it was barely half over yet.

"Yes," she heard in reply. "Irenicus slaughtered the Council of the Cowled Wizards and escaped. Bodhi knows where to seek him, and has unfinished business with him herself. She could help us track him and destroy him…"

"…or so she claims," Imoen finished. In the privacy of her mind, she wondered vaguely if Aran Linvail was even aware of her brother's dealings with his enemy.

"Or so she claims," Sarevok agreed. "Of course, we must allow that not all families share our kin's sentiment; she may actually be trying to betray us to him. In either case, it will be easier to deal with her if we allow Aran to capture her, I believe."

"So, you are not going to betray Aran," Imoen said flatly.

"No," her brother replied in the same tone, "I will not."

The girl pressed her tired mind to work. "What's this all got to do with me, though?"

"Only this," Sarevok replied. "So far, Bodhi has been awaiting my decision, and has refrained from capturing you. But once she learns that I do not intend to side with her, you will no longer be protected. She would have learnt this by tonight, even if that fool had not tried to take advantage of the situation."

"Which he did," Imoen said, with a tight heart thinking of her own infamous role in the Bloodscalp's attempted takeover. "And however well the new masters fare, there will be at least some confusion. The morale will fall."

"And the war will escalate," Sarevok nodded. "With all respect for your abilities, sister… If you fight as rank soldier, you may be captured. And, until I am ready to deal with Irenicus, I do not want you in his hands as anyone's gift or bait," he added with the cruelty of precision.

"But you will not kill me," Imoen said; and, in spite of her earlier announcement, started again to wonder just _why_.

"No," Sarevok laughed. "Not for now. I would take you with me to Aran's; but Aran wants me out of the city."

At this, Imoen blinked several times in surprise. "He wants you _out_ of the city during a war? What," she added, figuring that she owed the man at least one barb for all the amusement he had at her cost, "is he getting bored of you already? Or perhaps he doesn't trust you that much, after all?"

Sarevok smiled at her coolly. "Or, perhaps, he loves me and wants to protect me. Now, wouldn't this be an interesting possibility, sister?"

A moment passed in silence; at the end of which Imoen's brother, as if himself conscious and, most improbably, ashamed of the blasphemy of his words, started to speak slowly, "Aran has been trying to recruit the temples to fight Bodhi, sister; and the paladins, though virtuous and sworn to fight the undead, are not utter fools, and have their own fonts of knowledge. There will be a meeting today later; and there will be questions regarding harbouring a known outlaw."

Suddenly, Imoen understood; and, snorting, said, "But you will have gone for a walk."

"Yes," her brother replied, amused himself, "If need be, there will be thirty witnesses that I have gone for a walk. Aran will not know where I will be, what I will do, and when or if I would be coming back; and, best of all, he will be telling the whole truth and only the truth while doing so."

"And you, brother, are going to Trademeet."

"For a week. Aran has a house there."

Imoen laughed bitterly. "And I, I guess, am invited? You really are driving a hard bargain, Sarevok. You, the ever-protective brother, want me alive—for now; and out of harm's way—until you are ready to deal with Bodhi on your own terms. And, to achieve this, you do not make Aran send me on a mission outside Athkatla. You do not drive me out with a threat, or a warning. You do not incapacitate me and take me with you unconscious. No; you come here, and, after I tell you to treat me with respect, you do: you talk, and present arguments like a reasonable person we both know you aren't. And you even offer me a week in an undoubtedly luxurious house as a bribe… The only downside? I will have to spend the time in your presence."

Lazily, languidly, her brother replied, "You have misunderstood me, sister. I never invited you to Aran's house—"

---

He was still talking when Imoen slowly turned around and looked at the room all over again.

There were—so many things here. So many matters.

There was Edwin; who had taught her; who had tried to kill her; who had made her laugh; who had been a traitorous, greedy man; who had brought her milk when she had told him she had trouble sleeping; who had been a brother… It was terrifying that she could not even decide in what order she wanted to remember Edwin; that, right now, he was a tumbled, conflicted, chaotic mess in her mind; her sad, gap-filled memory.

Xan had been kind, she remembered suddenly; kind, and boring, and not fun. Had he been anything else, something she had lost to Irenicus? Or had she never taken the trouble to learn if he had been anything more in the first place?

So many things; so many facets in a single crystal. It, too, was terrifying. It made one think what else one had missed; what else one was missing; what might be hidden inside one's own self that one was missing.

There was Viconia; an evil, despairing and embittered woman who intended to infect her with her hopelessness and despair; and instead became the victim of her first murder. _Till I breathe, I will hope_, she whispered ferociously at the woman's shadow even as she learnt by heart the vision of her blood-covered body; and remembered that, no matter one's good intentions, or choices, or consequences, everyone had a breaking point.

She would have to do something about hers; even if it were only to—however amusing Sarevok might find the banality of this—learn to use her powers; and use them sparingly.

There was the game; a multidimensional game of chess, played on a board with fourscore sides for as many siblings; and twice as many further for those who decided to play the game of their own accord. She may elude Sarevok; but the game would always lure her back and trap her. He had told her as much before, if not in so many words and for no noble reason; his one piece of brotherly advice to her, she remembered.

Of course, Sarevok, too, was trapped in the game, even if he wished no way out of it. They really were equal and even, just like they had been in Irenicus' dungeon.

And, no doubt, he saw himself as the King of the winning side; the one key figure which remains victorious at the end of the game.

She wondered if he remembered how weak the King really is; almost stationary and in need of constant protection. It is the Queen who is the strongest piece on the board; the one who wins the game.

---

The skull at the top of the odds-and-ends shelf was looking at her unpleasantly, and Imoen suddenly came to a decision.

"Let's go, brother," she said. "I'm packed."

**End of Part II: Pawn to a Queen.**


	12. III: Horses' Move, 1

_I've finally given up, given in to the temptation and written in a certain reference which has been sitting in my mind cluttering it ever since before starting Part II. It's divided into two parts, although I doubt either will be particularly difficult to spot; and I have the terrible feeling that it's not half as amusing as I'm finding it to be. But then, my sense of humour has never been too sophisticated. _

_And there is also another reference, elsewhere. You'll see it when you get to it. I hope._

**---**

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**1**

_The eight day of Mirtul, 1369, on the road to Trademeet_

_It's a dark and stormy night._

_We're sitting in some damp cave_

"What are you doing, sister?"

The voice of the man—given what man we are concerned with—was surprisingly kind; devoid of its customary harshness and haughty arrogance, and tinted in their stead with a slight tinge of curiosity, it sounded almost pleasant.

Imoen considered the silhouette flickering on the wall in the dim light of the small fire they had managed to strike up. "Writing a diary," she replied truthfully.

"Go to sleep, sister. I'll take the first watch," her brother replied from his post by the opening of the cave; and Imoen, having considered the request, nodded, closed the small book lying in her lap, and put it away, together with the quill and the ink bottle, into her saddlebags.

The ground of the cave was hard, and there was almost nothing for her to cover herself with; only the travel cloak Sarevok had given her when they had been leaving the city—but it was not what was bothering her as she curled up to preserve body heat and put the saddlebag under her head to serve as a makeshift pillow.

No; what was bothering her was the dream she would be dreaming that dark and stormy night.

**---**

The little horse was pink.

The little horse was a mare and a jennet; wise, patient and sure-footed as all jennets are—and, technically, as the man told her, rose grey. She had belonged to the daughter of some puissant noble long before Aran Linvail had found her in the putrid stable of a byroad inn, half-starved and worked like a common household animal instead of the purebred creature that she was.

All this rolled by Imoen's ears entirely unheeded as she watched the little mare and vowed to herself that, if, or, better said, when, Sarevok's and her paths diverged again, she would be taking the horse with her if she must steal it. She was, after all and among other things, a thief. And a good one, at that.

The stables were located near the gates of Athkatla, in a part of the city Imoen had never visited before; Gaelan Bayle's territory. Here Aran Linvail, the collector of all things exquisite, kept his flock of horses; and, though the man himself would not know where the crown jewel of his assemblage was and whither he was headed, the man who worked his stables, most peculiarly, did.

"I need another one," Sarevok demanded of the middle-aged thief as soon as Imoen and he crossed the threshold of the place and shed their invisibility. "Saddled for riding. For the lady," he said, nodding at the girl; who, on her part, was looking around with an expression of wonder on her face. So _that_ was how Sarevok was planning to reach Trademeet before nightfall!

"For the lady," the man repeated, leering askew at Imoen; who suddenly noticed that the man's left eye was gone, replaced by a very nasty scar. "And how well do you ride, miss? Have you ever ridden a horse before?"

"Once or twice," Imoen replied; sincerely, to the very best of her memory. That had been in Candlekeep, and the horse was tall, dark, old and tired, she remembered; not suited for riding, really, and usually used only for pulling a cart with crops and vegetables.

Horses were expensive, of course; and horses for riding, doubly so. They ate much, required grooming, and were a favourite target of thieves and bandits. Only the nobles ever used them as a matter of course; everyone else, city dwellers, countrymen and adventurers alike, travelled on foot.

Well, the wizards teleported themselves wherever they wanted. But they were wizards, of course. Perhaps, one day, she, too, would be able to open dimension doors like Edwin could—

The return of the man and the two young boys his helpers broke the unhappy train of Imoen's thoughts. The man was leading the reins of two horses, one in each hand; the boys were carrying the saddles, which they shortly started to put on the two animals.

Sarevok's horse was a massive golden beast, of the kind bred specially to carry mounted knights into a fight; he had a graceful head he carried high and proudly, a long, dark tail, a short-cropped mane, and large, intelligent eyes; and, to Imoen, looked suspiciously like a—

"—a paladin's horse," Sarevok was telling the man. "I don't want a beast which will deem itself fit to deal out moral judgements of my behaviour."

"Worry not, my lord," the man replied. "It belonged to a prince, true, but a layman. This one," he said, pulling the second horse's reins, "was his daughter's."

The little horse was pink, Imoen noticed; and, for a moment, was lost to the world.

**---**

They put on the saddle and made her try and see if she fit well in it; then, put on the saddlebags into which she had put her possessions. She had a bow, a quiver, a quarterstaff, her short sword and her dagger; books, potions, scrolls, gems and personal sundries; and, finally, amongst the latter, Khalid's helmet, which she had left with herself more as a memento of other, different times than for any sensible reason. She really should have sold it; it was bulky, heavy and unwieldy, and took entirely too much place in her bags. But it was too late to do it now. In Trademeet, perhaps.

The contents of Sarevok's saddlebags, she would not ask about; all she noticed was that her brother, too, would be travelling lightly. He pulled out a pair of thick leather bracers from his luggage—Imoen's newly magically-trained eyes promptly detected a strong magical aura around them—and strapped them, quickly and efficiently, to his forearms; then, he reached to the bags again; halted half-way through the move; and, stating a fact rather than asking, said, "You don't have a cloak."

"I'll put up the hood of the armour," Imoen replied, surprised. "It'll be fine."

"No, wait," her brother answered; and turning around, said, "Jareth. Is there anything like a decent cloak anywhere in this pigsty?"

Presently, a cloak was encountered and recovered: an affair in wool, shadow and black, the likes of which the Thieves routinely worn on their longer assignments and a much smaller replica of Sarevok's own; and mildly enchanted with protective magic. Imoen put it on and put the hood up; they both mounted; and, not half an hour later, were outside of Athkatla's city gates.

There, the horses settled into an easy trot; and the siblings headed down the road to Trademeet.

**---**

It was a wonderful feeling, to be out of the city again, Imoen decided.

Later, of course, she would be all sore from the riding, unaccustomed to it as she was—and, even if she had ever been used to it, a week of freedom was definitely not enough to recover strength and stamina lost during five months of imprisonment. But for now, it did not matter. The day was fine, if slightly too warm for now; and she was out of the city, riding a horse wise enough to understand that she was dealing with a rider inexperienced at best. The only thing she might wish for was a different company.

Sarevok was riding next to her, wrapped in his own dark cloak and in silence as she was; they had nothing to tell each other, and Imoen sensed distinctly that there were limits to her brother's patience—and that singing, for one thing, would not be condoned. Not that it mattered, much; the day was fine; and Amn, she discovered, was beautiful.

The road first took them through the little hamlets outside Athkatla, whose inhabitants lived from supplying produce to the city; then, the villages and the fields grew much fewer and further between, and the road much less used; and what prevailed were the forests and meadows.

These were not unlike those further in the north, near Baldur's Gate; but this familiarity was perhaps even better than any novelty would be in its stead; and Imoen started to recall what little she remembered of Kivan's and Jaheira's all too frequent, and usually missed on her, lessons.

_The stinging nettle is used to help young mothers give milk for their babies. Flogging with it lessens arthritis pains. And you can use its fibres for paper and clothes._

_A poultice of plantain leaves is used for insect bites, rashes and some snakebites—_

"—the road goes on and on," she heard suddenly, and realised that she was singing, after all, quietly and atonally, to herself; and that Sarevok had spurred his horse, and was now riding far in front of her.

_Stuck-up idiot,_ she thought, feeling a sudden urge to stick out her tongue at her brother; and then, remembered of whom she was thinking, and what the man had done to her.

There was such a thing as too much familiarity.

**---**

They rode on and on, stopping only briefly and encountering few other travellers on the way; once, they met a caravan of carts, horses and oxen heading from Athkatla to Trademeet. The convoy parted before them when Sarevok, entirely unmindful of the people and beasts crowding the road, spurred his horse lightly and, imperious as a prince, rode full-speed in between them. Imoen shrugged, prodded her own mare and followed in his wake; and was herself in turn followed by oaths and curses of the angry ushers. She turned around, smiled and waved to them before she lost them from her sight.

Soon, though, the horses, well-bred, well-fed and well-exercised as they were, started to tire as the eve approached and the siblings approached their destination; and Imoen started to feel the aches she had known were inevitable. The armour and the saddle, however well-adjusted, started to chafe; and fatigue started to settle in.

They were now riding through a dense forest of birches, and ashes, and maples, and oaks, and rowans; there were all sorts of bushes and thickets growing by the side of the road; and the road itself, for some reason, was no longer level and paved with stones, but earthen and uneven, with large stones sticking out of it. Imoen frowned: this was a major road, and Trademeet could not be far away._ The druids must be really powerful here,_ she thought.

At that moment, the storm started.

It started as a light shower; but almost immediately it turned into a heavy downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Against the backdrop of the dark, overcast sky above, the tree crowns shook and bent; the dead leaves rose from the ground, hoist by the violent wind. The large raindrops were cold and so heavy that they hurt Imoen whenever they hit her; and since the wind was in the face, they hit often, blinding her. Even the twigs of the bushes and the saplings growing by the road started to lash at the girl and her mare; finding their way often; all too often for the girl's taste; almost as if by intent.

Through the heavy curtain of rain, she could see the gold of Sarevok's horse, now not five horse-lengths from her; her brother, too, had slowed down his pace almost to a stop by now. She prodded her mare and caught up with him. "We must find cover!" she yelled out over the wind as her mare danced under her. "We'll get lost!"

There was no answer; or, at least, no answer that she heard; but this did not disturb her, because at that point, she saw—or thought she saw—something by the side of the road.

She squinted; then, quite inconsiderately, elbowed Sarevok to get his attention; and, once she did, showed him what she saw.

A cave.

**---**

The cave was low—definitely too low for the horses, even for Imoen's mare; fortunately, the rock in which it lay overhung its opening, and this would provide at least some cover against the wind and the rain for the creatures.

By mutual and, of necessity, tacit agreement, Sarevok occupied himself with tying and unsaddling the horses while Imoen stole into the cave to see if it had some occupant in need of prompt eviction; thankfully, there was none.

The cave was small, but—in spite of all the drama Imoen would later attempt to insert into her breathtaking nascent narrative—quite dry and rather clean; there were only some leaves and twigs on the floor, which they would later use to kindle the fire. The girl looked around, liked what little she saw in the near complete darkness, and returned to the torrent outside.

There, Sarevok had finished tying the horses; and soon, they carried the saddlebags, with all the books, scrolls, gems and sundries contained within, into the cave. Imoen gathered the leaves into a heap in the centre of the room, and, with a simple spell of burning hands, kindled the small fire.

Then, they arranged their belongings, in silence; and then, they supped on provisions pulled from Sarevok's bags—also in silence; or rather, since complete silence proved impossible, using words sparsely and picking them with great care. Through some unspoken covenant, they had divided the cave between themselves, Imoen taking the back, and her brother the front half of it; and so they sat in silence, watching each other carefully again, as they had been watching each other in Irenicus' dungeon; much akin to two cats stranded on an ice float in the middle of a thawed river, each keenly aware of the invisible border demarcating their suddenly reduced territories. Sarevok's question were the first nonessential words either directed at the other since entering the cave.

Imoen fell asleep; and dreamt.

**---**

"Murder."

The Imoen who had spoken was taller, and tougher, and prettier than the Imoen who was listening; and there was murder in her eyes. This Imoen, it was clear, would suffer no fool. She would kill him.

They were standing over Viconia's body, in Edwin's laboratory, in a dream; and Imoen was listening, captivated, as the other Imoen—the one without the scars and with the dagger made of bone—elaborated curtly, speaking in efficient, clipped sentences:

"Murder is control. Order."

She swept her hand over the room and its neatly arranged stacks of documents.

"The ability to end a life is the ultimate power a being can possess over another. Thus, order."

She scanned the room with cold, unfeeling eyes.

"Murder," she repeated.

"Murder is chaos. Release."

The stacks all fell down, covering the floor with layer upon layer of disarrayed papers.

"It gives an outlet to frustrations and pent-up sentiments, setting them free upon an unsuspecting world. Thus, release."

Her eyes focused on the Imoen who was listening. "It felt liberating to kill that traitorous bitch." It was not a question.

"Murder," she repeated again, after waiting a heartbeat. "I am Murder. And, since I am Murder, so are you. We are the same. Like father, like child."

"—no," Imoen stammered out through parched throat.

"No?" The other Imoen seemed to be genuinely curious. "What else are you then, if not me?"

"—me," Imoen replied; perhaps because this was enough; but, more probably, because she physically could not say a word more.

"You? You," the other Imoen said, with such contempt that Imoen at once felt like a failure, to be immediately eradicated for the common good, "are nothing but a collection of blunders, errors and weaknesses. Look at me and dare tell me that I am not what is best in you. What is better than you."

"And, as you ponder the futility of rebellion and the reward of obedience," the other Imoen finished, smiling a cold, private smile, "remember to consider this: Why, even now, as we speak, are you murdering your brother?"

The dreamscape vanished; and Imoen found herself back in the cave, killing Sarevok.

**---**

How she had managed to incapacitate him in the first place, she would never learn; though later, upon closer consideration of the issue, she decided that a stunning dart suspiciously gone astray amongst her possessions, fortuitously discovered at the precise moment when it had been in demand, and thrown with the accuracy of a thief and a Daughter of Murder at a man who, fresh to wizardry and tired after an eventful day, may have let his guard down, and forgotten that magical protections are in need of periodic renewal—

—However it had happened, the deed had been accomplished; and her brother was now slouched half-sitting, half-leaning against the cave wall, stunned and watching through wide open eyes as Imoen was killing him tenderly against the backdrop of the rain and storm outside.

It really did feel great, the girl mused as she watched the point of her dagger pierce the man's clothes and skin between the fifth and sixth left rib; and a small trickle of blood flow out and stain the golden silk. It felt great: being the one in control, the one winning, the one finally on top; and the one about to be released and liberated from a constant, oppressive presence in her life. This was murder at its most private, its most intimate, carried out between a killer and a victim as familiar to each other as—precisely that: members of a family; or, possibly, as lovers. This was what murder should be. Not the impersonal, rash way her brother preferred.

Reluctantly, with a large dose of regret and a feeling that she was committing the greatest foolishness of her life, she started to pull the dagger out; and found that she could not. The tip of the dagger was still moving forward, pushed by her suddenly unresponsive right hand.

She put her left hand on the right, and tried to withdraw the dagger again. It would not budge.

"No! Not…like…this!" she gasped, fighting against her instinct and against the presence which had possessed her body; and, with a tremendous effort, managed to shift the tip of the dagger slightly so that it slid on a rib, dodged narrowly the heart and pierced the lung instead.

She collapsed, blinking, dazed and gasping for breath; then, pulled out the dagger—which now gave way without trouble—and promptly started to heal Sarevok, in one move reaching for a healing potion bottle, uncorking it with her thumb and pouring the potion straight onto the blood-spewing wound; once she saw that the makeshift remedy had worked and that the injured tissues had healed, she promptly rose and crossed over the exhausted fire to her part of the cave.

Having done the senseless thing and spared the life of a murderer, it was now high time to do the sensible thing and save herself. Her armour and most her other things must stay here; but, even groping blindly in the darkness, she found her sword and her bag of gems right where she had left them. Money and weapons; all else was of secondary importance.

She was already again by the exit when Sarevok caught her by the back of her clothes and dragged her to the ground.

"Oh no," he said. "You don't."

She managed to pull out her sword as she was falling down; but, after half a minute of general chaos and jostling around in the darkness, she was forced to admit the man's win.

She was looking at his eyes as he was pinning her to the ground and took away her weapons: a golden glow in the complete darkness. They had lost their fear-provoking quality long ago. Now, they were only an easy target.

"You know, brother," she hissed out. "This was the third time I saw you beaten in as many weeks. The golems, I understand. Aran's people, too. But now, you've let yourself be beaten by me. The plain, old me. Your little sister. You're really letting yourself go."

She felt the clamp-like pressure on her chest increase slightly. "Little sister," Sarevok growled out in the darkness. "Do you take me for a fool incapable of interpreting correctly the import of what has just occurred here?"

"No. I know that you're an evil bastard fully capable of misinterpreting it on purpose!"

The pressure lessened a fraction. "A good point," her brother admitted. "Even if not entirely conducive to discussion."

There was a moment of silence on both parts. Eventually, Sarevok said cautiously, "Sister. Yesterday, you made a request of me. Do you remember it?"

Imoen grimaced. "Yeah," she answered warily. "You're to respect me."

"I would now like to honour it. In return, I would have the same thing of you."

"And if I promise I do, you'll—what? Let me go, right?" Imoen asked sarcastically, still trying to wriggle herself out. Perhaps she could—

"In particular," Sarevok continued, ignoring her, "I would ask of you that you refrain from careless chatter. I am in a foul mood. And you have tried my patience already."

Imoen snorted, and immediately felt how the pressure on her neck increased to a point where it almost crushed her windpipe.

"Sorely, I might add."

The pressure disappeared completely; Imoen felt herself roll across the still-warm hearth to her side of the cave.

A moment later, as she was already on her feet and searching blindly for something with which to defend herself, a small, red light appeared in the middle of the cave. Sarevok had rekindled the fire.

She froze, as if she had been a novice thief caught red-handed during a robbery; but her brother was paying her no heed. In fact, he wasn't even looking at her, fully concentrated instead on searching through his own saddlebags.

"I had no idea that I had such a strong effect on you," he said thoughtfully, without looking in her direction.

He pulled out a potion bottle; and then, after a momentary consideration, another. "Here," he said, sliding the second flask towards Imoen; that, and after that, in turn, both her weapons.

The girl looked at the man in the dim light. There were rips and tears, some surrounded by dark stains, in more than one place of his once-exquisite silken shirt; and a gash on his cheek. She had managed to get to him, after all.

Of course, there was no telling how many bruises she would soon have herself; or how many bones Sarevok had broken. She felt around herself. Her ribs seemed intact, and she felt no major pain anywhere; still, she uncorked the potion and started to drink thirstily.

When she was done, she wiped her mouth with her hand, and considered her brother's earlier allegation.

"No idea? You knew it perfectly—"

—_you bastard, _she wanted to add; but in the end, did not. The sentence remained unfinished, hanging in the air, forever in anticipation of that final phrase which would complete it.

Sarevok still wasn't looking at her. "I know that you hate me," he said slowly, possibly more to himself than to Imoen. "I remember how paranoid you were about my person in the dungeon. And I do not dispute the merit of your reasons for either. There is a history and a future between us such as cannot be altered or amended. If no other sibling or outsider meddles in our affairs, we will end up fighting again; and, let it be made clear, I do not underestimate your skill, sister. As you have demonstrated sufficiently tonight, the outcome of our confrontation will be determined by a convergence of factors impossible to anticipate. It may all depend on who strikes the first blow—"

He frowned, obviously considering how to approach the delicate subject matter. "But, forgive me… I believed, especially in view of our yesterday's talk, that you have… grown out of me. That matters between us have become less personal. A matter of kin, of prophecy, of necessity; of vengeance. Or your idea of justice, perhaps. But I clearly underestimated the depth of your sentiment, if you were willing to subject yourself to our Father's manipulation just to get rid of me. This resentment and bitterness, pouring out of each crevice of your little, black, tainted heart—Why, I feel that I have grown to the rank of a symbol, almost."

"I didn't finish," Imoen reminded him coldly.

Suddenly, Sarevok looked straight at her. "No. You did not. You were there, all splendid and glorious in your pink and black fury—" Suddenly, he smiled lightly, as if at some private joke, "—as beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night, as the elven queen put it—and yet you did not finish. Curious. Almost as curious as your words. 'Not like this?'"

"'Not for now?'," Imoen shot back. "It's a matter between Father and me."

An amused golden look measured her over the hearth. "Is it? Really? Forgive me, but I was to be the victim of that murder."

"You know," her brother added, suddenly irritated, drumming his fingers on his knee, "if what we call Father weren't only a barely sentient residue of our dead sire's essence, incapable of thinking at any level but the most atavistic and instinctive, and certainly unable to act on its own, let alone coordinating its actions between different bodies… I'd almost say that—"

"—it used me to get at you," Imoen finished, frowning. She did not enjoy the implications of this idea.

"I was about to say, 'resented me even more than I had suspected'. But yes, yours is perhaps the better way to put it."

The girl did not have much time to consider before her brother added, "Travelling in your presence has suddenly become ever so more interesting, sister… Although I would like to ask what you intend to do about it."

"What _I_ intend to do about it?" Imoen asked, bewildered. "What _is_ there to be done about it?" She shrugged. "I mean, this thing's possessed me while I was sleeping. What am I supposed to do about it?"

She did not expect an answer; and none came.

"And, by the way," she added as the thought occurred to her, "I don't think that you're in the habit of falling asleep on a watch, either." She frowned as she reached the end of her train of thought. "What did you do to wind him up, anyway?"

On the other side of the cave, Sarevok laughed. "This, my fair sibling, is a matter between Father and me. Wine?"

"Err… Come again?" Imoen asked, confused by the sudden change of topic; and not in any small measure by the sudden novel epithet in her brother's repertoire.

"Wine? I have a bottle in my bags for some or other acquaintance of Aran's who may, I believe, easily do without it. And I doubt either of us is going to get much more sleep tonight. It's still raining, by the way—although I saw to the horses before, as you were just kind enough to remind me, I fell asleep on my watch. They were just fine."

**---**

Half a wine-bottle later, the mood in the cave was decidedly improved.

"I mean," Imoen, stretched on her side of the small fire, was saying, "I know that you're the light and centre of attention wherever you go, but isn't this taking it a bit too far?"

"What?" her brother replied, laughing, from his side. "Is it envy I hear? If you decide to stay anonymous in the shadows of those who do not equal you, sister, that is your choice. I, on the contrary, prefer to take my rightful place over my clear inferiors."

Imoen scowled weakly in his general direction. "Your rightful place— You're so full of it, brother, you're even worse than Edwin."

"Edwin—? Ah. Our late brother, I take it?"

"Yes. But I don't want to talk about him."

Sarevok shrugged lazily. "As you will. More wine?"

"No, thanks. Still have some. It's probably one of these very expensive things that you know everything about, and I nothing, too, isn't it? But, I mean," the girl said as her mind obstinately refused to abandon the previous topic, "Edwin… He at least had the decency not to be able to deceive people so that they would follow him."

Her brother took a swig from his own water flask-cum-wine goblet. "I will not apologise for having been born a leader as well as a demigod, sister."

"A duke of Baldur's Gate. Almost a duke, that is," Imoen snorted. "Anishai, after meeting you once, looked like she wanted to—to have your child! And, yesterday, what you did to those thieves—"

The man frowned. _"What_ did I do to them? I rather thought I saved that vermin's lives."

Imoen turned her head to look at her brother. He seemed to be genuinely perplexed.

"You," she said pointedly, "don't care for their lives. Unless as a future sacrifice."

"No," her brother agreed. "I don't."

Imoen, satisfied, pressed her point on, "You make people follow you. Love you. Want you, even. And then die for you. You, brother, are a cruel god."

"Yes, I am," Sarevok replied candidly before adding, "So are you, sister, even if you refuse to recognise this yet. Such is the fate of a Child of Murder: we bring death to all we touch: to those we hate and those we love alike."

"Except that some of us do it less metaphorically than others, I guess?" Imoen retorted, indignant at how lightly her brother was taking the topic; and, in no small measure, at herself for not being able to let go of it.

Sarevok evidently chose to ignore her comment. "They love me, you say," he said; then, smirked, and added, "Love me and despair."

He took another swig of wine, and, resting his head against the cave wall and looking at the ceiling, repeated thoughtfully, "Despair, when they find out that they cannot stop me, cannot cage me, cannot control me; cannot have me as their own. That a prophecy cannot be averted."

Imoen found herself staring at him. "Is that how you justify that girlfriend of yours to yourself, brother?" she asked coldly. "Is this what you're planning for Aran, too?" she added when she received no answer, more out of spite than for any other reason. "A death when you decide that he stands in the way of your destiny?"

"Aran," she heard suddenly, "is a fool. An extremely sly, extremely cunning, extremely intelligent… fool. However, little sister," Sarevok added, and Imoen suddenly found herself once again treated to an amused golden gaze, "I will not discuss the exact nature of my liaison with your superior with you."

A terse silence followed; broken only when Imoen's brother, suddenly irritated, asked abruptly, "How did my journals fall into your possession?"

Imoen blinked, surprised by the unexpected reference to such ancient history. "The diary? We found it in the Iron Throne building. On the body of another of your mistresses," she added, for good measure.

"Not the diary," her brother replied soberly. "The journals of my research into Alaundo's prophecy. They were in your room in the guild. Or—" His face changed. "Our brother. Of course."

Imoen suddenly understood. "Two books? In leather? Made of some sort of loose parchment? They are _yours_?"

Sarevok watched her curiously. "I see that you are aware of their existence after all, sister."

"Well, yes," Imoen replied, wrinkling her nose. "I saw them. Edwin had them brought by someone. Some merchant. Marcus. A fat lout. But that's all I know."

Sarevok nodded slowly; then, stood up and stretched as much as he could in the low cave; and, having approached the opening and looked out, told his sister, "It's come dawn, and we're an hour's ride from Trademeet. And the rain has stopped. I suggest we be on the move."

**---**

They emerged from the cave into a much more subdued world.

The grey light of pre-dawn filtered through the dense foliage above; it was cold, and Imoen immediately wrapped herself tighter in her dark woollen cloak.

The earth had turned to mud, and travelling would be difficult; but the first mating calls of birds could already be heard, and the air smelled magnificently of wet earth and ozone.

The horses were gone.

An involuntary cry to that effect escaped Imoen's lips when she saw what had happened. Only the remainders of the leather straps with which Sarevok had tied the beasts were still there, dangling sadly from the small tree to which they had been strapped.

Sarevok picked them up to inspect them. Their ends were cut neatly and slightly scorched. "Some sort of a flame blade," he decided.

Imoen nodded; she had reached the same conclusion. "Druids. And we'll never find them now," she added, looking at the earth turned mud. "The rain wiped off all the traces."

A spike of anger crossed her mind. The druids. The _thieves_. How dared they.How dared they take _her_ horse, _her_ mare, with her long, warm neck and her small ears she pricked when something interested her, and—

Suddenly, she noticed that Sarevok stopped raising his head, just for a moment, before smoothly continuing the move; and that his eyes, just for the same moment, narrowed and glimmered. She turned around, as casually as she could, to see what he had seen.

A man was standing between the trees, tall and handsome, with blue tattoos on his face and feathers in his long, black hair; clad in a dark green cloak which looked as if woven from leaves and moss and grass themselves, and leaning against a staff which was not smooth and elegant, but rough and wild, almost like a tree living still. He looked very much at home in this place—much more so than Imoen and Sarevok; he seemed, somehow, an integral part of the forest, his essence inseparable from its own.

He was looking straight at them; but, lost to some meditation of his own, appeared to pay them no heed.

"Wait," Imoen hissed to her brother; and, not waiting for the answer, started to make her way through the forest, trying to get round and behind the man so that she could catch him if he tried to escape. She was two-thirds of the way there when Sarevok, too, started to move towards the man slowly, in a prowl-like walk; timing his steps so that they would both arrive by the druid at exactly the same moment.

They were both nigh on him when the druid slowly came out of his meditation. "Excuse me," he said in a fairly pleasant voice, looking from the one surprised face to the next and smiling. "For a moment there, I was lost in the differences between the male and the female oriole… But, tell me— Did I hear correctly that someone stole your horses? And that you think some druids did it? If you are right, then this is unsettling news, indeed. The druids in this region have always strived to live peacefully with the city dwellers, and have never taken their property. I wonder what could have changed that— However," he said suddenly, perhaps aware of the irritation growing on Sarevok's face. "Don't let's linger, crow-like, on the fringes of the problem, but let us instead, as the wolf does, head for the kill. I am Cernd, and if it is the local druids you are looking for, then I know where you can find them. As a matter of fact, I'm heading that way myself."


	13. III: Horses' Move, 2

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**2**

_9 Mirtul, evening, Adratha's cottage, swamp near Trademeet_

_Cernd is quite nice. When we first met, he thought that…_

_**---**_

"_Aren't here?_ What do you mean, druid, _aren't here?_"

The druid shrugged phlegmatically. "The grass has grown back, and there are no fresh tracks on the ground. Like a herd of deer in search of a greener pasture, they, too, have moved on. We can continue onto the camp site, but we will find nothing there."

"Do you mean," Sarevok growled, "that you have led us all this way for nothing?"

Gently and inescapably, a pleasant Kara-Turan face appeared before Imoen's eyes, superposed on the soft grass of the forest clearing where they were now all standing; and, because it did, the girl said, "But if they are gone, how could they have taken our horses?"

The druid put his left hand under his chin and considered. "Gragus must have taken them to the swamps," he concluded reluctantly. "There is a henge there… Though I cannot see why. It is not the time for rituals."

"The swamps?" Imoen asked.

"Yes. Not two hours' walk from here, and not a place where city dwellers may possibly be at ease," Cernd replied peacefully, eyeing meaningfully Imoen's hair and Sarevok's clothes. "The hunting grounds of trolls, ettercaps and spiders."

"…and spiders," Sarevok repeated. "Are you saying that you think we are unfit to deal with trolls? And _spiders_?"

Imoen shot him a telling look. "I think that you will find out that we can just manage. Trolls _and_ spiders," she said to the druid. "We… aren't without fighting experience," she added, trying to restrain herself from snickering.

Cernd looked them both all over again, this time more carefully; and this time, something—perhaps in the way Imoen had arranged her cloak so that it would not get in the way when she reached for her sword; or in the way Sarevok, while not stopping leering at him askew, at the same time did not cease to scan the edges of the clearing for signs of danger; or in the way the siblings had, almost unconsciously, spread out so that they would not get into each other's way when the time for fighting came—must have told him to ignore the lack of calluses on their hands, and the fact that a barely three hours' walk through the forest had been enough to strain their strength and Sarevok's patience; and to decide that, possibly, he was not facing only two rich, foolish scions of a noble family lost in a storm during a hunting trip; and thus, in the end, to murmur softly to himself, "Well. We shall see if a peacock's plumage hides anything but a vain interior."

Raising his voice, he asked, "Have you ever dealt with trolls before?"

"Yes," Sarevok replied just as Imoen answered, "No."

There was another pair of exchanged looks, brown and gold; at the end of which, Sarevok said, "Druid. As amusing as letting this farce continue would be, it is high time it came to an end. We are both entirely capable of defending ourselves. We know that to deal with trolls, we need acid or fire—"

"—we do?" Imoen interjected, fascinated; and ran in her mind through the list of fire spells she remembered and could possibly use given such circumstance.

Sarevok ignored her comment and continued, "Both my sister and I are capable of a measure of sorcery; certainly enough to dispatch whatever comes our way. In short: do you intend to guide us to this mere, or are we to seek our own path?"

The druid looked from the one determined face to the other; and Imoen could follow his train of thoughts as easily as if she could read his mind. If he refused, he was thinking, these two would do precisely what the brother was threatening: blaze their own trail through the forest and the swamp in search of their stolen property. Perhaps they would find it; probably not—but, certainly, city dwellers that they were, they would care little for the disturbance of peace and balance their visit would bring to the grove.

It would be more gainful to bow before the storm than to fight it, he was thinking. Besides, the news of the thievery was, indeed, upsetting. Most upsetting.

"Let us move, then," Cernd said, confirming Imoen's all sad ruminations. "But follow me, and be mindful where you step. Mother Nature suffers no fools."

"Good," Sarevok commented as they headed back into the forest. "Neither do I."

**_---_**

Lunch was roasted swan in herbs; half-burnt and half-rare, but nonetheless sating; and it left everyone in a much better mood.

The bird had been killed by Imoen as they had been entering the swamps: a cool, dark place under a dense canopy of alders, an interminable labyrinth of land and still, unmoving water; and on the border between them, reeds and ferns and duckweed and giant mushrooms; and the overbearing smell of rotting and decay. A paradise for frogs and birds and insects; and also, for giant spiders and trolls.

They must have scared the swan off by their approach, because it emerged, suddenly and majestically, from the reeds by the side of the path, flying low and almost straight at them; almost without bothering to move its giant wings. Imoen had one final moment to admire its beauty before the string of her bow played; and the bird, dead, fell into the water, losing all its life and elegance in a single instant.

Next to her, Sarevok swore; and, clearly judging that his clothes were long beyond salvation, quickly took off his sword, boots and bag, unclasped his cloak and tore into the water and in between the reeds. A moment later, he emerged, wet, barefoot, and covered with duckweed; and carrying the bird in his arms. "A fine shot, sister," he said admiringly; the arrow was embedded deep in the swan's breast.

"It was a clear target," Imoen replied, noncommittally.

"Your brother is right to praise you, though," Cernd said suddenly, and they both looked at him, surprised; the druid moved so calmly and quietly; he had not spoken a word since the exchange on the clearing—and had such a way of blending in with the background, that they had both almost forgotten that he was still there. "You are a quick draw and have a good eye. May I see it?"

He approached Sarevok, and examined the bird. "The cob, not the pen," he said thoughtfully to himself; seeing the incomprehension on both faces, he added, "The male, not the female."

"And—?" Sarevok asked in a combination of irritation, curiosity and amusement. "What of it?"

Cernd shrugged lightly. "Death is a part of the great cycle. But it's the beginning of Mirtul, and the eggs are not hatched yet. Their mother is necessary in the nest."

"And later?" Imoen asked, with an odd sort of morbid, obstinate curiosity. "What will happen later? When they hatch?"

"The cygnets are raised by both parents together," Cernd replied. "Perhaps they will survive with only their mother to protect them. Perhaps not. They fledge quickly," he added upon seeing the girl's suddenly dead face.

"I forgot," Imoen said; and, though this was the exact truth, she knew how weak the excuse must sound to a stranger. "I thought that, well, it weighs twenty pounds at least, and we almost haven't eaten breakfast—"

Cernd smiled at her; and, suddenly, she felt relieved, as if, after all, she had been pardoned for her crime; or, possibly, found innocent of some other crime she had not, after all, committed. "As I said, death is a part of the great cycle," he said peacefully.

"I think that we may make a stop here, before we enter the swamp?" he added, looking at the siblings to gauge their opinion.

Imoen nodded; and her brother, suddenly amused, added, "Why not? I'll pluck the bird, and you two find something to make the fire, and some herbs. Or berries. Or—something," he said, giving up every last pretence of possessing the slightest shred of wildlife lore that did not pertain to killing, finding himself a relatively level spot of ground to sit down, and putting himself, still covered in duckweed and dripping with water, but meticulously and efficiently, to his chosen task.

**_---_**

Kyland Lind and his people, they met somewhat further on, after they had eaten, Sarevok had dried and Imoen had learnt that Cernd lived in the grove, but had been gone to Tethyr to speak with the Grand Druid there before— and here, the man suddenly grew silent; and, after a moment, asked her to excuse him. He did not really want to talk about himself.

Imoen understood this feeling perfectly; and so, instead, asked Cernd if he had ever heard of a druid by the name of Jaheira; or, perhaps, her husband, Khalid.

The druid considered this question for a moment in silence; at the end of which, he said, "I heard it spoken of Jaheira. A very strong-opinionated woman and a fervent defender of nature's cause, the people said… But I have never spoken to her, or seen her. Why do you ask?"

"It doesn't matter, really," Imoen said, dissatisfied. "I knew her, once, and I thought that maybe you heard of her." She looked in passing at her brother; his face was, predictably, expressionless. "This reminds me. I have another question you may help me with… Do you know a place called the Windspear Hills?"

"The Windspear Hills? Of course I do," the man replied, slightly surprised. "A twelve hours' travel on foot from here, in the exact opposite direction from our starting point. Or an hour-and-a-half's ride from Trademeet. Is it where you were going?"

"Not really," Imoen replied. "But I think that it is, now," she added as, this time, she felt Sarevok's curious gaze upon her.

"There is something I need to do there, and I've taken my time doing it already," she added for Cernd's sake, feeling at the same time a need to explain herself and a reluctance to explain the minutiae of her quest.

She could see a glimmer of curiosity cross the man's eyes, though he hid it well; nonetheless, he said only, "It's a rough terrain, with bears, ankhegs and—" slight hesitation; so brief, Imoen was almost sure that she would have missed it altogether, once, "werewolves."

"Werewolves?" Sarevok asked casually. He, too, must have heard the slightly too long pause.

"Yes," Cernd replied. "Dangerous and, though they control their lycanthropy to some extent, not to be reasoned with. Those packs enjoy hunting humans. After your previous display," he smiled at Imoen warily, "I'm forced to admit that, even though I haven't seen you fight yet, I will not be overly astonished if I learn that you are—you _both_ are," he said, nodding courteously at Sarevok, "more than novice fighters. Even so, you really should not try going there alone by yourselves."

Imoen decided to omit the small detail that she was planning to visit the hills alone; and instead, once again, resolutely changed the topic, "All right. I get it. Another question, then. These trolls. My brother may have dealt with them before, but I did not. What's this about fire or acid?"

"Trolls regenerate, little sister," Sarevok interjected. "Acid and fire cauterise the wound and prevent it from closing."

"I wasn't asking you," Imoen snapped at him; and encountered a smug look in return. The man was having entirely too much fun playing the conscientious elder brother in front of the oblivious druid. _For all we know, you are the younger of us, brother_, she thought stingily. _Though he is a bit of an idiot. For one thing, doesn't he realise that glowing eyes aren't exactly… well, natural?_

"But he's right," Cernd replied quietly, nonetheless managing to draw both siblings' attention to himself. "As the lizard regenerates its torn tail, so does the troll regenerate its body—even torn limbs. Acid and fire stop this process. You wouldn't have acid or fire arrows with you, by any chance?" he asked Imoen.

Imoen shook her head. "No."

"Adratha will have some, though," Cernd said, before explaining, with a small smile, "An old acquaintance. Part ranger, part medicine woman… She lives not far from here, and," he added, this time clearly for Sarevok's sake, "we won't stray far from our path to the henge. We should stop by her cottage as we go; she is a vixen, and little escapes her. She may even know why Gragus led my people here."

Imoen felt rather curious about this Adratha, who was a vixen, a ranger, a medicine woman and Cernd's old acquaintance; but before they reached the cottage, they met Kyland Lind and his people, fighting trolls; and many things changed.

**_---_**

The druids were four, all wielding flame blades at whose sight Imoen again, for the hundredth time that day, recalled just why exactly she was here, trekking through this swamp in the presence of an utter stranger; and, worse still, that of her brother.

The men and woman were all in a hollow part of the path, in water; and Imoen, who was at that time in the lead, saw them first as she reached the top of the hummock: four figures, clad in dark skins, set against a backdrop of verdure, fighting three hideous, dark-green creatures with blindingly red, fiery blades. It was the second sight of that day which would remain with her for a long, long time; even after all that she was yet to see and experience.

The men joined her—she smelled an odd, errant whiff of frankincense still clinging to Sarevok; and an equally odd mixture of fungi and herbs, nightshade and ergot and monkshood, their druid companion had told her he was using to cure an ailment of his—and together, they watched as the druids below them felled the first troll.

"Kyland Lind," Cernd whispered, showing them the tall, muscular man in front. "A good friend," he added in reply to Imoen's questioning look, "but rash and impetuous like a young bull. He will not thank us if we lend them a hand."

Imoen, not ceasing to watch the spectacle below, grinned. "He will have to live with it, I guess," she said. "I'm not staying here until evening waiting for them to finish. Brother?"

"After you, sister," Sarevok replied, with a smirk of his own. "We owe it to our guide, I believe. The left one first?"

Imoen looked at him, mildly curious about what he was planning; but, in the end, shrugged and put an arrow on the string of her bow. Not the head, she decided; better in the rib cage—

She released the arrow; another one, magical, emerald-green and toxic, followed almost immediately. They both, unerringly, reached their target; two other such twin arrows soon dealt with the other troll.

**_---_**

His instincts were telling him that the moon was almost full and out already, even though it was barely past noon; grasshoppers sang their song in the grass; and, for a moment, Cernd thought that his eyes were mistaking him, and that a deer's head had flashed in the thickets by the path.

They were city people, he was thinking; though the sister, at least, must have once spent some time out of doors. Her each step was softer than the next, as if she had been once taught to move through forests and was now remembering the way. The brother lacked even that elementary knowledge; although he had fought trolls before, and she had not. Or so he claimed.

Mercenaries, possibly, confined to city for some time. This would explain the money, the scars and the skills at the young age. Far from a comfortable idea; far from the type of people one wanted to lead to one's home.

Leaning against his staff, he watched the two, the huntress and her brother with his pestilential arrows, killing their prey; and, for an instant, it was as though he were not seeing human beings, but a pair of young gods descended upon the mortal lands, radiant and laughing; and intransigent.

But the impression passed quickly; and all that remained was a young, rosy-haired woman and her doting, odd-eyed brother.

**_---_**

The impression passed quickly; not in the least because, once the arrows reached their targets and the trolls fell, the attention of the druids turned to the three figures standing on top of the hummock; for then, Kyland Lind started to chant a spell; his three companions followed in kind; and Cernd's face froze.

"No! What is he—?" their companion said, stunned; Imoen put another arrow to the string of her bow; and her brother started to cast another spell.

But this time, the arrow and the magic missiles ran at different targets, and neither of the two at Kyland Lind: the arrow at one of his male companions, and the missiles at the woman. Their casting was disrupted; Kyland Lind's chant was not.

Imoen had already reached for another arrow, and Sarevok had already started another chant, when they heard a low-key buzzing in the thicket around them. The buzzing grew louder very quickly, and soon, insects started to emerge from the bushes: flies and mosquitoes and grasshoppers and dragonflies, all flying straight at the siblings. They swarmed around them, sitting on their clothes and skin; Imoen could feel them creeping between her hair, getting under her cloak, her armour, falling into her boots, biting her skin; trying to get into her eyes through the eyelids she had closed just in time. It was a terrifying, maddening feeling, being sit upon by this black, thick, living, moving, biting and buzzing crowd; blindly, she shot out the arrow she had already put on her bow, and then dropped the bow, and reached instead for the ring on her finger, managing to forget just in time that insects do not see as humans do, and that invisibility spells targeted at humans do not affect them; and that even if they did, the insects were already upon her.

And when, belatedly, she realised that, she panicked.

She reached to her eyes, trying to swipe away the small flies which insisted on getting into her eyes; for a moment, it worked, and she was granted a tear-blurred vision of her brother, covered with a black, living coat of his own: running, reaching the hollow, with his one hand swiping flies off his own eyes; then, in passing, skewering Kyland Lind on his blade; and then, tearing the sword from the body, and spinning around to defend himself from the she-druid's staff.

She reached to her own sword, and started down the path; as she did, a faint chant reached from behind her through the insects' buzzing; and she had just enough time to wonder why, in all that, she had again let herself forget about Cernd—before an asp flew right into her eyes, and she closed them, and stumbled on a stone; and fell.

**_---_**

She came to the awareness that she was lying in a warm place, under a cloak; that sunrays were falling on her face; that she was thirsty; that her armour was off; that there were no insects on her; and that her whole body hurt.

In particular, her left arm was nothing but one, large chaos of dull, numb pain. Something—something beyond a simple cut or bruise—must have happened to it; it had been healed, later, but the aftershock still remained. It would fade soon, of course; but, for now, the arm _hurt_.

Having reached this intricate conclusion, she opened her eyes; and saw Cernd.

So, he still lived, she thought dozily. Between Sarevok and his own friends, he still lived. That took some skill.

The druid was sitting next to her, cross-legged and erect, submerged in his own thoughts; though soon, perhaps somehow aware that she had awoken, he slowly opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Hello there," he said, smiling. "I was almost getting worried about you. Here. Water." He put something which felt like a water skin to her lips.

Imoen started to drink. It was water; although there was in it also a faint taste of something bitter and herbal she could not quite identify.

"Your brother is alive," Cernd said quietly. "You don't have to worry about him. He's off to wash himself, but he's alive."

Imoen grimaced, and stopped drinking; then, she slowly pulled herself to a sitting position. It turned out that she was again at the top of the hummock, in the almost exact place from which she had been shooting at the trolls.

"I think that I'm remembering why I didn't like adventuring," she said, just to change the topic. "That is, I like it, but these bits I could do without. What happened?"

Cernd moved away from her slightly to give her some personal space. "You fell," he started to explain softly, "and your bag tangled with your cloak and caught your arm. It sprained—"

"—and probably crushed and broke, too, I get it," Imoen replied, trying not to see the picture in too much detail. It was no wonder that the arm still hurt, then.

Then, remembering herself, she said, "Thank you. For healing me, I mean."

Cernd shrugged phlegmatically. "It is no problem," he said, and smiled.

"But I wasn't asking only about this," Imoen clarified. "The last thing I saw was Sarevok—"

She broke off suddenly. There were some people with whom discussing killing was easy. But, sometimes, she wished that this wasn't a constant topic of her conversations even with strangers.

Cernd shifted a bit. "After my friends," he started to talk in a voice as gentle as before; though now, much sadder, "attacked you, I didn't know what to do. I did not recognise Kyland any more than he recognised me. The druids here really have always lived well with the outsiders—not symbiotically, perhaps, but in respect of the boundaries of each other's territories. That's why I—" He fell silent.

"It doesn't matter," he said at length. "What matters is that I was perhaps willing to let the matters between you two and Kyland run their own course, as the river does—until I saw you both, fighting fiercely like a pair of wolverines cornered by hunters. Then, I… grew ashamed. The pack is not always correct. So, I—" He fell silent again.

"He transformed," an amused voice picked up the tale. Imoen looked in the direction from which the voice came: Sarevok was leaning against a tree on her other side, dressed now in dark animal skins. He must have taken them off Kyland Lind's body, because there was a large hole in the middle of the leather tunic where the sword had passed through. "Our guide, sister, is a werewolf."

Imoen looked at the man sitting by her. He was looking at her with his usual stoicism; but this time, she could feel faint traces of apprehension behind the mask of composure.

"You're a werewolf," she said. It was a bit hard to believe that this gentle, laid-back man could turn into a throat-ripping, bloodthirsty monster taller than Sarevok; but, she decided, she was not the best person to judge by appearances.

"Yes," Cernd replied.

Imoen filed away the information, and said, "All right. What happened next?"

At this, Cernd's mask fell; he frowned, blinked, and looked questioningly at Sarevok. Imoen followed with her own gaze; her brother shrugged and said, "I told you, druid."

"_You_," Imoen asked darkly, "told him that _I_ would not run away from a werewolf?"

Her brother replied matter-of-factly, "He asked."

Imoen turned to Cernd and asked, probing the matter as if she were prodding an aching tooth, "Whatever gave you the idea that I would run away from a werewolf when he did not?"

"You cannot pin a werewolf to the ground and demand that he prove that he can transform back into a human?" Cernd suggested quietly.

Imoen looked from the one male face, long, dark-haired, and serene, on her right, to the other, bald, golden-eyed, and amused, on her left; and, having thus checked the veracity of the absurd implication of this statement, and, in a small part of her mind, told herself that though Cernd was probably correct (and the _probably_ in it was a matter of concern in its own right), there were a great many other things she might do to a werewolf; and finally, decided that the entire matter was ridiculous, anyway—said, acerbically, "I'm surprised that you let him go as it was, brother."

Sarevok shrugged again; lightly, and yet in a way which, somehow, left completely open the possibility that the matter may be reconsidered in the future; and said, "You were missing, sister. And we still need a guide."

"Yes," Cernd added, picking up a blade of grass and playing with it. "After matters of," he smiled slightly, "pack allegiance were settled, we realised that you were still missing. I remembered that you had turned yourself invisible, and purged invisibility in the area. That's how we found you. I cleaned the wound and reset and healed the arm, and your brother carried you here. That is all."

The arm was no longer hurting, but Imoen's pride smarted. She ordered it to shut up, and tried to concentrate on the more important matters; such as, for example, the fact that the nice, gentle man who had just healed her had killed his friends fighting for her. _The chaos we sow in their lives, _she thought mirthlessly.

She knew perfectly that whatever had caused the druids to behave like this preceded Sarevok's and her arrival in the swamp; but a small part of her mind couldn't help thinking that, perhaps, if—

"I'm sorry because of your friend. Friends," she said; and, for the second time that day, felt inadequate.

Cernd smiled sadly, and shook his head. "This is a wound which, I'm afraid, may heal only with the change of seasons… But I would know what poisoned my friend's mind so that, like only a human and a crazed animal does, he would kill without reason."

Imoen smiled back at him, and said, "Then you're still with us. You're not a lone wolf," she added, more quietly; and saw the smile on the druid's face turn the slightest bit into a grin.

"Yes, he is, sister," her brother replied; all too loud for the moment—from under the tree. "We'll first go meet this Adratha; and then, if we manage to reach them today, his people. If not, we'll stay overnight in the cottage."

"You do know that you should spare the arm today?" Cernd half-asked, half-suggested; and Imoen, after giving the matter some thought, decided that, indeed, she did; and that some spell-casting practice would be a welcome change.

"I think that I'm ready to go," she said; and then, reconsidered and said, "As soon as I wash off the rest of these flies and put on my armour, that is."


	14. III: Horses' Move, 3

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**3**

_9 Mirtul, evening, Adratha's cottage, swamp near Trademeet_

…_Cernd also has a son…_

There were trolls.

There were trolls, and giant trolls, and spectral trolls; and ettercaps, and spiders.

To put the afternoon in a word, it was busy; not exactly eventful, but busy.

Perhaps its only interesting feature was the changing expression on Cernd's face as he watched troll after troll and spider after spider fall to Sarevok's blade and Imoen's magic. By the end of the day, by the time they reached Adratha's hut, the druid started to comment quietly that trolls were also a necessary part of the ecosystem, and that the depletion of their population on the swamps would—

At which point Sarevok interrupted calmly, saying that if the troll population of the swamps did not want to become entirely extinct, it had better stay put that particular day; for, as Cernd might recall, Mother Nature suffered no fools; and nor did he. Which rather did away with the discussion at issue.

There was the feeling that the day and the swamp would not end, ever; that this patchwork of hummocks and hollows, of land and water, would go on forever and ever; that forever and ever would they go, with Cernd in front, setting the path; Sarevok right behind him; and Imoen in the back, watching the trees and the reeds and the birds and the insects, and trying to remember if she had ever seen anything exactly like this before. And the only shade on this travel—apart from the sweat, and the hunger, and the fatigue, and the mosquitoes, and Sarevok—was this: that both siblings were novice wizards only, and that Cernd would summon only ever so many flame blades.

Which was why, when finally the sun lay low and the shadows lay long, and they came out of a patch of trees and saw a stream of running water under a stone bridge in front of a rather large, wooden cottage which had a garden with herbs and vegetables and flowers in front of it; and what looked, for all things in the world, like a cow-shed, and which in the end turned to be a goat-shed, next to it; and even, most impossibly, smoke rising merrily from its chimney into the sky above it—everyone was relieved.

Even though Imoen could not restrain herself from asking, and only half-jokingly, at that, "Are you sure she's not some evil witch, Cernd? It almost looks too good to be true."

Cernd smiled. "It does, doesn't it? Adratha does work some magic, but only to prevent this place from getting overgrown by the swamp. She lives here alone, because she does not enjoy company; she works her potions and trades them with my people when we come here for the rituals. But she's not evil. No," he said; and, for the very first time since Imoen had met him, he laughed. The very idea was, apparently, absurd.

"You said that she's a ranger," Sarevok commented.

"She is," Cernd replied. "She cares for these lands, and is, I think, somehow bound to them. Although how precisely is a matter between her, the land, Nilthiri and Gragus… Let's go. Like a weaned cub desires its mother's milk, I, too, am thirsty for news."

Imoen laughed; and together, the three of them descended the last slope and crossed the stone bridge which led to Adratha's cottage.

---

The door was wooden and rough; and the feel was that whoever lived inside did not especially care for the city polish; and that, thus, Sarevok had done well in shedding his golden silk for Kyland Lind's dark deer-hide garb.

Cernd knocked on the door: once, twice, thrice. "Adratha?!" he called out. "It's Cernd."

The door opened, and an old lady's face appeared in it. "Cernd?" she asked. "Welcome! Come in."

They entered, and the door closed; the inside was nice, dark and warm, with a fire buzzing in the fireplace, and a smell of sage, parsley and garlic in the air; and two young men sitting by the square wooden table in the middle of the small room. "My grandsons," Adratha introduced them.

"Grandsons?" Cernd asked. "I didn't know you had grandsons!"

At that, Sarevok's eyes glimmered slightly in the darkness; and Imoen's wandering attention, too, was caught.

"They have come here recently," Adratha explained.

"They have?" Cernd asked. "To visit you? That's wonderful! I have brought friends with me, too. I hope that we can stay here overnight?"

Adratha grinned widely. "Yes. Of course. You can."

Cernd blinked. "You have such large eyes, Adratha," he said. "I never noticed that you have such large eyes."

Imoen frowned, squinted, and pinched herself. For a moment, something glimmered in the place where Adratha was; something much larger, and with much larger eyes.

She pulled out her dagger, as surreptitiously as she could, and cut herself on the palm, deeply, drawing blood. The pain sobered her; and now, she could see clearly what stood in Adratha's place.

A head of a tiger; a dress of silk and muslin, completely amiss in this drab, simple cottage; and, perhaps worst of all, the palms reverted so that they were on top of hands—

Adratha was looking straight at her. "And so, the godchild sees me as I am," she said. "No matter. Saadat! Jalaal! Come! Today, we shall feast on the flesh of gods!" And with that cry, the creature discarded the illusion in which it was shrouded, and revealed its true shape for all to see.

Imoen, almost by reflex, shot out at it her last spell: a volley of magic missiles; as it turned out, to completely no effect. Sarevok had somewhat more luck; unable to reach his sword, he bore down on the creature, swiping it off its feet; then, he sought the blade again, and finally managed to get hold of it; and impaled the tiger just as Imoen unsheathed her own sword; right on time to defend herself from Adratha's 'grandsons'.

A large shape passed her then, furry and almost bent in half under the low ceiling, and threw itself on one of the feline shapes which were now afoot and trying to pass through Imoen's defence; and a moment later, a rabid, spitting ball of fur not unlike that a cat fighting with claw and tooth a dog started to roll through the small space. Imoen would have possibly laughed; if, that is, she were not still occupied with defending herself from the claws of the last tiger, ducking and dodging, left and right, trying to find cover behind the table and an opening to strike. Which, in the end, she found; and Saadat, or, possibly, Jalaal, lay, too, gutted, and dead.

And, shortly, the ball of fur eased and parted in two; and the werewolf tore off from the last tiger's throat. For a moment, he looked straight at Imoen, with a curious expression in his golden eyes; Imoen looked back—at them; and the long snout; and the black, blood-covered and, in some places, torn-out fur; and then, she wasn't looking at a werewolf anymore; but at Cernd.

"Wow," she said.

Sarevok laughed.

---

The first thing they then had to do was to clean the room.

This was done, by unspoken agreement, without any allusions being made to one's lycanthropy; or, possibly, divine descent. For Cernd was a discreet man; and the time for momentous revelations, it was understood, would come after the cottage was cleaned, and the bodies of the tiger-creatures taken out of it; after a meal was prepared and the true Adratha; or rather, her body—was found. The day had been long and trying as it was; and everyone was tired. There was no need for tempers to run wild at this hour.

"Calishite silk," Sarevok said, touching the fake Adratha's clothes. "And Calishite steel," he added, eyeing appreciatively the long scimitar the tiger-creature had not managed to pull out before he had killed her. He undid the ornate buckle of the belt which held the, equally ornate: ruby and emerald-set—sheath. "Druid?" he inquired. "Sister?"

"No," Cernd replied, "I don't want it."

"I don't want it, either," Imoen added.

Sarevok shrugged lightly. "As you wish."

He pulled off the belt from the corpse; sheathed the scimitar; put it in the corner of the room where they had dropped off their bags and weapons; then, the men pulled the bodies out through the back door, to the yard; to the dung heap by the outhouse.

Imoen remained in the main room of the cottage, fixing the odds and ends which had fallen off the shelves when the werewolf and the tiger had fallen into them; she had just lifted one of the sturdy, heavy chairs when Sarevok returned to the cottage for the last body. "Come with me, sister," he said flatly; and, forestalling any possible questions or objections, added, irritated, "The druid found the bones."

Imoen, marvelling at the simple fact that her brother still had the shreds of decency to admit that he was not the best person to have around after one found the body of one's friend, followed him to the yard; wherein she saw Cernd, carefully picking human bones out of the stinking dung heap and putting them onto a spread of white muslin. The bones, she noticed when she came closer, bore bite marks: deep, elongated indents.

Sarevok dropped the last body and made himself scarce; Imoen, suppressing the sudden urge to gag at the sight and the smell of the heap, approached their companion, and crouched in the mud next to him.

"Death is a part of the great cycle," Cernd said quietly, not taking away his eyes from the dung heap, the bones and the white muslin. He had found the skull: it was shattered and caved in from some great impact, and there were bits of flesh still clinging to it. "But this… is possibly too much death in one day."

"I will have to meditate on this," he added a moment later.

Suddenly, Imoen wanted to cry. But this was not her grief, she reminded herself; this time, again, like after Gorion, she would have to be the comforter. Her own grief… that was in Athkatla's cemetery, safe and secure with the priest of Kelemvor.

"You will bury her," she said slowly over the white muslin, half-asking and half-assuring.

"Yes," Cernd replied. All the larger bones were now lying on the cloth; a gruesome puzzle, a toy for some necromancer to resurrect. "When I learn what happened to my people. There is too much unrest in my mind for now. There is time for all in the cycle of seasons, and the time for grief, too, will come." He started to wrap the bones in the muslin.

"Is it… possible that I join you then?" Imoen asked hesitantly. "There is— It's Jaheira," she said suddenly, "She's dead, and Khalid's dead… And I've promised myself—" She broke off, irritated; so much for being the comforter; so much for not pressing herself on Cernd's grief.

Cernd finished the wrapping; and looked at her at last; and smiled. "Yes," he said. "But now, I think that it is the time we thought of the living. The goat has bleated. They have not killed her. But she must be hungry. And she must be milked."

Together, they returned to the cottage; Cernd put away the bundle among his own things, in the corner; then, found a pail; then, still together, they went to the goat-shed; where they found, bound and unconscious, a druid.

---

"Pauden?!" Cernd asked, stunned, as soon as he opened the door. Imoen peeked into the dark inside of the shed: a large, black-and-white and rather angry she-goat in the corner; an ancient, bald and wiry; almost monkey-like—man on the ground.

"He's alive. And fine. Just unconscious," the druid told Imoen as, kneeling, he ran a cursory check of the old man's body. "Can you call your brother? Take him to Adratha's bed; he should recover soon. I will deal with the goat. Or will try to," he added, eyeing askew the bleating, baaing, irate creature. "She is angrier than a bear awakened midwinter."

Imoen blinked and frowned; and then, returned to the cottage; in whose main room-cum-kitchen, Sarevok was cooking.

This was, possibly, the one thing which irritated her the most; she was willing to accept that her brother was human, insofar as that meant that he was mortal, and she might kill him one day, when she so chose. She was, therefore, willing to accept that he must eat; but, in her opinion, he simply should not cook. Eat food prepared by servants, fine; cook, no. There was a limit; and it riled her to see it broken. Murderers of one's family and friends should not be seen cooking. It made them too human. It was unfair on their victims.

"You are needed in the goat-shed, Sarevok," she said flatly. "Cernd found someone."

---

They put the druid called Pauden in Adratha's bed in the side room; Imoen stayed with him while Sarevok returned to the kitchen and Cernd, to use his own expression, dealt with the she-goat.

Whatever the deal was, it paid off; for, not ten minutes later, Cernd appeared in the kitchen, carrying a pailful of warm, steaming milk; and that milk, they later gave to the almost toothless druid as themselves they ate the horrible stew Sarevok had prepared.

"—Cernd," the monkey-like man said in a raspy voice as he opened his webbed eyes. "Or are you Cernd? You—and these two—" He squinted and noticed Imoen and Sarevok. "Ah."

"If we were those shapeshifters," Sarevok said coolly, looking out through the window and drumming his fingers on the window frame, "you would not be now lying in the bed, old man."

"Pauden," Cernd, sitting on the bed by the old druid, added placidly, "I know your name. I know you. I know Verthan, your twin brother. I am myself."

"Can't you cast a spell, or something?" Imoen vouched from her own spot on top of a large wooden chest standing next to the bed.

"Yes," Cernd nodded. "Cannot you open your mind's eye and see us as we truly are?"

The old druid frowned, and, stubbornly silent, started to think. Imoen, crestfallen, dropped her head and sighed. This was not how interrogation was supposed to go. In particular, this was not how interrogation after a too busy day after a too busy night after a far too busy day was supposed to go. "Cernd," she said, finally giving up. "Do you have anything restorative? Any herb? Drink? Whatever? I'm tired."

This quite concentrated the attention of everyone in the room on her; even Sarevok stopped drumming his fingers on the window frame, and looked at his sister. A moment later, without bothering to drop a word, he stormed out of the room.

Cernd, too, rose slowly from the bed. "I think I can find something. I, too, am tired, like an overworked ox. Though my yoke is fairly sweeter than an ox's," he smiled; there were now mischievous sparks in his eyes.

Imoen blinked; and, as Cernd left the room, wondered if, in some oblique druidic way, she had just been complimented; or if it had been just the delusion of an overtired mind.

---

She remained in the room, watching the old druid; who, in turn, was squinting at her suspiciously, clearly trying to determine if she was a human-eating monster and utterly oblivious to the fact that if she, indeed, were one, she would have probably discarded him already for being too wiry and too old—

She remembered the illusion of Adratha. Adratha had not been young, either.

That rather sobered her.

And just in time; for, shortly, her brother strode back into the room, holding something. "Old man," he growled out; and, having thus captured the druid Pauden's attention, he put what he was holding right under the aged, half-blind eyes. "Look. See. Touch. Smell. _Taste_ the blood of your enemies. And choose. And choose correctly. As my sister may tell you—"

"Don't," Imoen interrupted him frigidly. "Don't you dare finish, brother. If you do, then, I swear, whatever it takes, you won't survive the night."

She wasn't even looking at him; instead, she was looking at his offering to the old man: three feline heads, held in one massive fist by the long, luxurious fur of their crowns.

"Little sister," she heard a voice which was not amused, "you may be aware that I do not take kindly to threats."

"Well, neither do I, little brother," she heard herself reply. "And I especially do not take kindly to threatening an old, defenceless man with the death of another."

"Defenceless?!" An indignant snort. "Gorion was hardly defenceless—"

"Excuse me—?" A small, unsure voice interrupting.

"Yes?" Two voices, speaking almost in unison; two heads turning and two looks cast towards the door, where Cernd stood, holding three cups with something hot and steaming inside them. Imoen wondered how much he had heard. Judging by the thickness, or rather, thinness, of the walls in the cottage, everything.

---

Whatever was in the cups, it served well to calm tempers, soothe minds and let everyone focus on the matter at hand; and Imoen wondered transiently if she was not simply drinking a bitter, faintly herbal-tasting version of the Potion of Clarity; not a potion she could yet prepare, but one she had heard Edwin— No.

No; in any case, Sarevok's bloody offering served well to assuage also the old man's wrath: the druid Pauden looked at the tiger-creatures' heads with a vengeful expression in his webbed eyes; touched them; smelled them; and, finally, to Imoen's incredulity—for, if nothing else, this bespoke a frame of mind completely alien to her—tasted the blood dripping off their necks onto the soft deer hide under which he was lying. Then, and only then, was he satisfied that his enemies were dead.

By that time, it had grown dark already; and so, they lit the bees'-wax candles in Adratha's bedroom; then, took for themselves the stew, and warmed the milk for the druid; who, before long, started to speak.

"Cats," he said; and cackled. "Three _cats_. Three _cats_ were enough to put me down. Me, who once wrestled with bears and won! Old age, my boy," he told Cernd, "is no easy piece of bread."

"Old age, Pauden," Cernd replied, with a small smile playing on his lips, "only hardened you, like the oak. But don't let's speak of it: I have more questions for you than there are ants in an anthill! What were you doing here? And what has Gragus been thinking? Why is everyone here, instead of the forest? Kyland attacked us as we were passing through the swamps," he added, much more serious now.

"Kyland? This isn't Kyland?" the druid Pauden asked, squinting at Sarevok, who had retaken his stand by the window. "He smells of Kyland," he added defensively as Imoen restrained herself from laughing for the sake of the old man's pride.

"No, Pauden," Cernd, meanwhile, replied evenly. "Kyland is dead. He attacked us, and I would know why. These are my friends from the city, Imoen," he said, nodding at the girl on her wooden chest, "and her brother, Sarevok," he said, pointing at the man.

"From the city?" the druid asked suspiciously. "From Trademeet? You brought two of those rats here? How? And why? We won't accept submission, girl," he told Imoen in a voice suddenly hard. "This is more than a mating display. Trademeet must perish. Whatever Faldorn is doing, my boy," he finished with conviction, looking back at Cernd, "in that, she is right."

"Faldorn?" Cernd asked to this; even as Sarevok inquired, "Trademeet?" and Imoen, "Perish?"

The old man, content at becoming the object of attention of everyone in the room, shifted in the bed and stroked his hairless scalp; Imoen could almost see in his place an old tom cat licking his fur, smug and self-satisfied after a victorious fight. "So," he cackled. "You youngsters really know nothing? Well. Bring me more milk, because I'm parched—ah, what insult, that I, who once ate the raw, steaming liver of a bear freshly hunted should now drink milk!—and I will tell you all."

---

They brought him milk; and once again, the druid Pauden started to talk.

"It started almost a month ago, just after the previous full moon," he said. "Then, Faldorn and Dalok came to us from the north. Faldorn challenged Gragus to a fight—and what a fine fight that was!" A tear glimmered in his eye as he fell silent; no doubt he was reliving the clash. "She won, and ascended to leadership. Then, of course, we learnt that they both were Druids of Shadow," he added glumly.

"Shadow Druids?" Cernd repeated, clearly disturbed. "They preach that cities and artifice are a cancer which must be cleansed from the healthy tissue of the land," he explained, turning to the siblings. They both nodded; they had had their own, if separate, dealings with the Shadow Druids before.

"And they are right, my boy," the old man, meanwhile, stated complacently from the bed. "They are right."

"Pauden," Cernd pled. "Not now. Verthan and you can discuss it as leaves grow and fall, but now I must know what happened… I take it that the Shadow leader ordered that outsiders be attacked on sight? That is why Kyland assailed us?"

"Yes," Pauden replied, and, sighing deeply, added, "And then, no. My boy," he said gravely, looking sympathetically at the younger man, "Faldorn has Malika. And Ashdale."

"Ashdale?" Cernd asked calmly; though Imoen noticed that the skin of his palms had suddenly gone white, so tightly had he rolled his fingers into fists. "What do you mean, she _has_ Ashdale?"

"It is full moon tomorrow," the old man replied sadly. "And Faldorn, we now know, is insane. Oh, no one questions what she is doing in Trademeet—"

"And what is she doing in Trademeet, old man?" Sarevok rumbled from his corner.

"No," Cernd said urgently. "Tell me of Ashdale, Pauden. _What is she doing to my son?"_

He was nearly yelling now, like a wounded, trapped animal, Imoen noticed through the daze of surprise; somehow, the news that Cernd was a father amazed her in a way that even learning that he was a werewolf had not. Perhaps it was the way he had completely avoided the topic until now, even after he had learnt that something was amiss in his homestead— But Cernd was a discreet man; and everyone had secrets they would rather not disclose to strangers.

In his corner by the window, she saw Sarevok's eyes narrow and glimmer; and then, return to their previous indifference. He had filed away the fact; he now had a pressure point to use on Cernd in the future, if he so desired; Imoen hated him.

Cernd himself was now pale and earnest, and oblivious to all but the druid Pauden's old, dried-out face; and the old man, gently, but firmly, as if he were dealing the blow of mercy to an animal beyond salvation, told him what, by now, everyone knew.

"She says that the new leader of a lions' pride kills the cubs of his predecessor; and so, she will sacrifice Malika—Gragus' daughter," he said, adding for the siblings' sake in an unprecedented display of consideration. "Tomorrow at the henge, as soon as the moon appears. She wanted a boy to pair with her. And, well," he shrugged, "no one wanted to let go of their blood children, and you, my boy, were gone. You must understand them, Cernd. They are—_we_ are," he corrected, "all afraid of her, like hares in fear of a fox."

"I gave him to you for safekeeping!" Cernd yelled out in the small room. "Is that how promises are kept among the druids of Amn?"

"Cernd, she has bonded with the grove," the old man said quietly; upon which, Cernd, wide-eyed, fell silent.

"I came here," Pauden spoke on, in the same tone, "seeking Adratha's aid and counsel. She was the only one with enough power on these lands to possibly counter Faldorn's influence. But Adratha met her own fate. _Cats_!" he laughed bitterly. "Never trusted them."

Cernd, without further word, rose and stormed out of the room.

After a moment of silence, Imoen followed.


	15. III: Horses' Move, 4

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**4**

_9 Mirtul, evening, Adratha's cottage, swamp near Trademeet (ctd)_

…_and this, in short, is it. I would never have pegged him for the type to tell bedtime stories, but if he's right…_

_Here's hoping he's not right. Even he says he doesn't have to be. So, maybe there's no reason to mope. :)_

_Except that now I'm tired._

_Well, sitting here writing won't make the sleep go. And half the night has already passed, I think. So, time for bed._

_Sheesh, when I think of the people who slept in it today…_

_---_

She found the man on the stone bridge which joined Adratha's cottage to the swamp, standing there motionlessly, looking at the stream running below: a solitary, cloaked figure with folded arms, dark, oily eyes and a mask instead of a face.

"Forgive my outburst," he said calmly when the girl approached, without taking his eyes off the water. "I sometimes forget that I am far too old to behave like a reckless cub. You have, possibly, come here to comfort me. If so, I thank you for the sentiment; the words are not required."

"Are you sure?" Imoen asked cautiously.

Cernd looked at her and smiled. "Yes. The water soothed my mind, as it is wont to… For a moment there, I forgot that nature knows subtle paths; that I need not rush in like the gale, seeking to open closed doors. I should, instead," he said, looking back at the stream, "move like the gentle breeze, and get in through the gaps around. The henge is nigh close. We will take some sleep; and then, hidden like the wind, steal into the camp before the night is over. You two will take your horses; I will take my son. With nature's favour, we shall leave as unseen as we enter."

A certain part of Imoen's mind could not help but admire the idea. This was the quintessential thief's plan: move in, steal the target, and move out, without alerting anyone in the process.

This was not the part which asked, quite coldly, "You do know that the woman will simply pick another child?"

A muscle twitched on the man's face; but when he replied, his voice was steady. "Yes, I do."

"You have thought the matter over, I see," Imoen said, looking at the water glittering in the moonlight and trying to keep cool; she still seemed cold to herself, instead.

"You are not a mother," Cernd replied vehemently; and then, as if disturbed himself by the suddenness of his reaction, added, in a much quieter voice, "If you are asking me if I can live with the consequences of my decision… then yes, I can."

And it was clear from his tone that he had, indeed, considered all the implications of his choice; which was why Imoen did not press the issue, but instead asked calmly, "Why can't we just kill her?"

She was not at all surprised by how easily the question came to her; they had killed monsters with Irene.

Cernd's mouth moved, as if he had just bitten something bitter. "Because she has bonded herself with the grove. This means," he said, casting a quick, furtive look at the girl, "that whatever harms her harms also the land; and that, as long as the land is healthy, she will take from its powers to strengthen herself. She should not, but—" He shrugged desperately.

Imoen winced. "You mean she's invincible?"

"As long as the land is healthy, and barring challenges for leadership, yes," Cernd replied flatly.

"And you won't harm the land," Imoen nodded. The water under the bridge was laughing, silvery and pearly in the moonlight, at her. "And the challenge?"

"A fight," the man said, suddenly and bitterly. "A fight which I cannot win."

Imoen frowned. "Faldorn won the fight against Gragus."

"Gragus never bonded himself to the land the way she has. He… thought it too intrusive. He was bound to the land, yes; but only because he served it, and the land repaid his service. He was an old man—a bit younger than Pauden, perhaps," Cernd said; and Imoen, not for the first time that day, wondered how old the man himself was, "and he was wise in the winter of his life. Many could have won a fight against him, but chose not to."

"Including you," Imoen challenged.

"Including me," Cernd agreed.

"But this ritual challenge is the only way to get at Faldorn," Imoen said, folding her own arms. It was really getting cold, and her own cloak was back in the hut.

"Yes," Cernd said reluctantly. "Ultimately, the bond is not with the person, but with the—" He shrugged. "Rank, for lack of a better word. Challenged for supremacy, Faldorn is vulnerable; still strong, but vulnerable. The new leader would fill the void left by her death, and could then slowly dissociate the bond, if he or she so wished."

Absently, he took off his cloak and offered it to the girl; she wrapped herself in it—like all Cernd, it smelled of herbs—and tried to think. "So, in short, outside of a challenge, Faldorn can't be killed. You don't think you can win this fight, which is why we are taking your son and leaving. Is that right?" she said, looking into the druid's face for confirmation.

There was no intent in her words beyond establishing the facts; which was why Cernd's reaction to them startled her so. The man tensed and recoiled, almost as if physically hit. "You must think that I'm a spineless coward," he said, without meeting her eyes.

Imoen frowned. What did it matter what she was thinking? a part of her wanted to ask; for, after all, they had known Cernd all of one day; but then, it had been a very busy day, and the man clearly needed some sympathy in what could not be the easiest decision for him. And he would not get it anywhere else. "No," she said; and then, suddenly, laughed. "No. That would be what Sarevok would think of you. Me, I think that you are just a nice, normal guy we happened to." She winced; the last part hadn't been exactly planned.

Cernd looked at her oddly; the way he had looked at her when she had first learnt that he was a werewolf. "You happened to?" he asked incredulously.

Imoen, suddenly finding that she could not look the man in the face anymore, said, "Yes. We tend to do this to people. Sow chaos in their lives." She winced again: put this way, it sounded almost like some sort of a mildly embarrassing disease, instead of the fact of it: that people tended to die around her, in gruesome ways.

There was a moment of silence; at the end of which, a calm, sensible male voice said, "Well. No one is perfect."

Imoen, frowning in disbelief, looked at the druid; who, on his part, immediately looked away, saying, now much less reasonably and much more turbulently, "As I should best know."

Suddenly, he crouched at the edge of the bridge, and stretched out his hand; as if the sight of the water was no longer enough to calm him, and he needed also to feel its cool touch.

Above him and behind him, Imoen sighed and shook her head. "Cernd," she said sadly. "I really think that Adratha would understand it if you took Ashdale and left. And that so would Pauden. Me, you're right, I'm not a mother, but if someone threatened my child, I would probably do the same thing as you said—if I really couldn't do anything about Faldorn. Because, somehow, I don't think you would be half as bothered by this whole affair as you are if you really couldn't do anything about it. So… why don't we cut this conversation short? Let's strike a deal. Go and fight Faldorn tomorrow. In return for that… win. Just win. If you must fight her, then don't hesitate. Kill her. Your son will need his father."

"I'm not exactly the best material for a godmother," she finished with a terrible, self-derisive smile, looking at the almost full moon reflected in the water; and feeling cold; so cold.

A bird's death cry echoed through the swamps.

_---_

"Pauden," Cernd said as he accepted the cloak Imoen returned to him as soon as they entered Adratha's hut, "I will need you."

"What?" was all the cantankerous old man managed to utter as he was gently led out of Adratha's bed and into her kitchen; wherein Cernd told Sarevok, sitting there by the almost put-out fire, "We'll spend the night outside."

The younger man nodded. "When will you return?" he asked.

"An hour after dawn at most. If not, Imoen knows what to do," Cernd said, smiling at the girl; who smiled in return. "Good luck," she said.

"With nature's favour, it will be," Cernd replied peacefully; and, together with Pauden, left the cottage to the siblings.

A silence fell then. Imoen went to her things to put on her own cloak; Sarevok rose and added to the dying fire. "And so, the wer found the motivation to release the wolf," he said thoughtfully.

Something glittered on his neck in the light of the fire; a necklace, previously hidden by the high collar of his clothes, now escaped as he had loosened the laces of the shirt. This was all of him that was not dark to Imoen as she replied, "You are crude today, brother."

"Yes," the man said; and laughed. "Yes, I am. But the interpretation was all yours, sister."

He stood up from the fire; poured something into two of the clay cups on the table and pushed one over to Imoen. "But let's not fight, now, sister; there are things you must know."

"What's this?" Imoen asked, surprised and suspicious.

In the darkness, her brother shrugged. "Adratha's finest fruit wine. The old goat showed me where she stocked it." Suddenly, he laughed again. "It's not poison, sister. Adratha was, by all accounts, an expert distiller. Drink. You are cold. And I really think you will want to know what the druid told me."

"You spoke with the druid, then," Imoen replied casually, sitting by the table. "I'm surprised he would tell anything to a city rat." The wine tasted slightly sweet and slightly sour; in other words, as wine should.

Her brother seated himself on the other chair, turned half towards her and half to the fire. "Apparently I smell right to him," he said lightly.

"This does not surprise me. After all, you have put on the skin of a druid, brother," Imoen remarked amiably, eyeing the man. Here, in the darkness, smelling sweetly and sourly of wine, and dressed in the dark clothes of the man he had killed, he looked like something very different from his urbane persona; and the one impression was that, indeed, this Sarevok was much cruder, though definitely not less cruel, than the other one.

Perhaps it was his true self, she could not remember; and, in any case, soon, he replied flawlessly, "As you have put on the skin of a huntress, sister. I think," he added, taking a drink of his own wine, "that this is the point where our friend would add some thought on the idea of mimicry."

"Friend?" Imoen asked, concentrating on the word which felt the most, plainly speaking, wrong.

"I like him," her brother replied. "He is half a man and half a beast, and it is hard not to commiserate with that. Although he has learnt to control his beast a bit too well, perhaps," he added after a moment. "There is a yearning somewhere in him, teeming right under his skin… Haven't you felt it, sister?" he asked, shooting a curious look at Imoen.

Imoen, looking at the burning eyes before her, thought of the druid's own—dark and oily; and of what Cernd and Pauden were now doing out in the forest—and said, "You will stay away from him, brother."

Sarevok laughed. "You are being territorial, sister."

Imoen poured herself more wine. "And you, brother, are again being crude," she said calmly. "What did Pauden say?"

"That Faldorn's partner, Dalok, is the one who has our horses. He took them while his shift were returning from Trademeet— A moment, sister," he said as Imoen was about to ask just what was happening in Trademeet. "We need some order. Dalok is an elf, blond with green eyes. It would be best if you killed him." For a moment, his voice was hanging expectantly.

Imoen considered. "They know Cernd and Pauden; you will be yourself and will look like one of them. They will think that I'm the weakest link. There must be no weakest link. Is that correct, brother?" She took another sip of the wine.

The man was looking at her curiously. "I must confess, sister, that I did not expect such insight from you," he admitted, looking away from her and back to the fire. "Then you raise no objections?"

Imoen shrugged. "Cernd will have enough trouble as a leader as it is," she said. "He isn't exactly you. He's far too nice, and not half ruthless enough."

Her brother looked at her askew. "I will take your words as a compliment, I think," he said. "But you are right. It is odd to see a father who cares for his son. Still—" He frowned. "First, he will have to survive the fight. The old man mentioned that there may be some trouble?"

Imoen took another sip of wine, and relayed what she had learnt from Cernd about Faldorn, her bond with the grove and the druid ritual of ascendance; at the end of which, her brother, pouring himself the rest of the wine-bottle's contents, said carefully, "We might tip the balance of the fight in his favour. There is enough poison in this hut—"

"We might," Imoen interrupted, "but we won't. You will bring no plague of yours here, brother." The wine, the fire and the cloak were working: she was feeling much warmer now.

Sarevok shrugged. "Plague? What an odd word to use… Do you know what Faldorn is doing in Trademeet, sister? For the past three days, the whole city has been strangled by vines, watched by wolves, spiders and panthers; and beset by insects. Ants and grasshoppers, devouring everything they encounter; flies and mosquitoes, fouling water and spreading disease; bees and asps, stinging all who dare leave their houses— Ingenious, in a way," he said, with no small dose of admiration. "I give them another day or two, most. I would like to have met that woman in different circumstances."

Imoen remembered the insect swarm which had attacked them earlier that day; and shuddered.

"Even if they managed to send out a courier for help through magical means," Sarevok, meanwhile, mused, "there is nothing they can do to save the city. They may try to break out through the siege army; but, without druids or advanced magic, nigh impossible to work out in the limited time, the city is lost. Of course, the Council of Six will not suffer this insult easily. Trademeet is a chief trade node; and if they let Faldorn take it unpunished, she will press on."

"There will be retaliation," Imoen groaned, suddenly understanding. "Here. And the army will not hesitate to destroy the grove to get at Faldorn." She looked at the man. "An imminent pestilence there, and a pending bloodbath here. And us, squarely in the middle of the future battleground. You must be having fun, brother," she said; and then, as a sudden thought hit her, a suspicious glare entered her face.

The man returned the look calmly. "I am glad that you have thought of the possibility on your own, sister," he said. "But I neither have done nor will do anything which would put Cernd's enterprise in jeopardy. I think," he laughed, "that I will enjoy seeing Logan Coprith's face as he ponders whether to hang me or invite me to his house too much for that."

"He's the High Merchant of Trademeet, sister," he said, seeing Imoen's momentarily confused face. "A reasonable man. Cernd will, I believe, find him amenable to peace overtures," he added.

"If he wins," Imoen said, and finished her wine.

"Well," her brother said, rising to his feet and approaching the fire again. "This rather depends on what you have done to him, sister."

"What I have done to him?!" behind him, his sister protested.

The man shrugged. "Well, not I. As, I hope, we have already made clear."

"I haven't done anything to him," Imoen said, scowling at the broad back which cut off the light and warmth from the rest of the kitchen. "I like him."

"And he is attracted to you."

"If he is, then it's none of your business," Imoen said, set her cup on the table with a decisive thud and rose to her feet. "Good night, brother."

As she was circling the table to get to the bedroom, Sarevok closed his eyes and started to rub them with the palm of his left hand. "A man returns home after a long travel," he started to speak slowly, almost hesitantly; and Imoen, surprised by the sudden change of tone, looked at him across the table.

"On his way," her brother was saying, "he encounters two strangers lost in a forest during a storm. He helps them. He guides them. He hunts with them, and shares his food with them. Then—"

"But it wasn't like this!" Imoen protested. Cernd did share his food with them, on that morning which seemed so far ago now, but—

"Then," her brother continued mercilessly, "they finally reach his people; and when they do, the man finds his home in disarray, his friends changed or dead, and his own child in danger. He also learns that the strangers are—"

"But it's us!" Imoen yelled out. "We're us! Not strange people from some fairy tale!"

It was as if Sarevok hadn't heard her at all. "The strangers," he repeated thoughtfully. "They will repay the man's kindness in kind, of course. This is how the story ends. They are human; and they will fight for him; and, perhaps," he laughed mirthlessly, "they would even if their own matters were not taking them his way. But they are not only human, sister."

"Well, we're not gods, either!" Imoen shouted out; and then, having found a rational argument and thus able to calm herself down, added, "Whatever your megalomania tells you, brother, we're simply too weak to… give out divine favours. Or however you wish to put it."

For a moment, she hovered, uncertain and expectant, on the far end of the table; before setting, once again, for the bed and the bedroom.

"The strangers," the singsong voice resumed, halting her in her tracks. "The brother— No; of him, we shall speak not; he plays no part in the story, save, possibly, to his own grief, that of the oracle powerless to counteract the doom he foretells. It is the sister who acts; let us, then, speak of the sister. She is all the man worships in the land he reveres: is firm; is cruel; is kind; is protective; is compassionate; is demanding. She likes the man; like the old woman his respected friend, she is a huntress who knows well the value of life; she understands implicitly the man's own creeds; she requires that he fight for her and heal her; she is, lastly, a striking young woman. The man is a widower—"

"Now, you don't know that!" Imoen said indignantly. "You're drunk, brother," she added, disgusted, as she finally realised the simple truth.

Between her and the fire, Sarevok laughed lightly. "Drunk? Yes, I am drunk. Or, possibly, prophetic. The forest affects me, too; but it is of the man that we now speak— The man. The man is a mystic. He thinks in metaphors and speaks in similes; he lives his life amongst rituals, mental exercises and brews designed both to curb his own second nature and to make his mind more open; more pliable—more… receptive to certain forces. He, in short, is not an ungodly man. As the sister-stranger is not an ungodly woman. But; and this is, I believe, the point of these drunken ramblings… She is a huntress and, in half, a goddess, but she is not Mielikki's daughter."

Imoen sat—not on the chair; for the chair was still standing between her and her brother—but straight on the table; and said, "So, what you're saying, brother, is that I somehow… changed Cernd, without either me or him knowing, because he—" She searched for words for a moment; and, finally, unable to find proper ones for what she wanted to express, finished, "let me? Let himself open to me?"

The man's head dropped, as if all tension had suddenly left his neck muscles; he turned around, opened his eyes, and said, "Yes. The question, sister," he added, now coolly amused, as he picked up his chair, turned it round, and, putting his hands behind his head, spread rather than merely sat on it, "is what you did to him when he did."

Imoen narrowed her eyes. "Nothing worse than you ever did, brother, I'm sure. Am I to bring back the topic of Mae'Var's thieves?"

Her brother shrugged. "Do, if you wish. I convinced them to follow me—"

"How very noble of you," Imoen interrupted acerbically from the advantage of the table's height.

"—If anyone can be called an ungodly creature, sister, it's Aran's thieves. I could not influence their instincts if I wanted; much less inspire them to murder. Or to let themselves be murdered," the man sitting on the chair below her finished calmly; and, suddenly, Imoen understood what, in an uncharacteristically roundabout way, her brother had been trying to tell her.

She wished she had had more wine before it had ended.

_---_

They were watching each other in the suffocating silence, the girl sitting on the table and the man on the chair in the corner by the smothering fire.

In the end, the girl spoke out first. "Didn't it occur to you to tell me all this a bit earlier?"

The reply was simple. "I am not your keeper, little sister."

"You said you like him," the girl replied desperately.

The man scowled; but then, suddenly, relaxed. "I didn't know it could happen," he said lightly; almost flippantly.

The girl blinked. "You didn't know it could happen."

The man shrugged. "It never happened to me."

"Then how—"

A small smile crossed the man's face. "You asked me about the thieves… You should have asked me about my acolytes, sister. They did take their power from me, and it strengthened them both internally and corporally. But they did so knowingly, and after months of preparations."

"You mean you are guessing?! We've wasted all this time on your guesses?!"

"Don't glare at me like this, sister… When you two returned from your little heart-to-heart, he was changed. That, of and in itself, does not mean much; after all, he did just take a significant decision. But you… you were cold. Frigid. Do you know how cold your other self is, sister?"

A silence.

"What will happen now, brother?"

"I don't know."

"Then what do you think will happen?"

"What favour you grant may have but one consequence, sister. A murder. And you know whose death tomorrow will breed more death in turn."

"But he has his own gods to defend him! And I'm, well—"

"Yes." A laugh. "It's all half conjecture and three quarters prophecy. Nothing of it must come to pass. But—"

"But I am a cruel goddess, and may kill him for the fun of it. Is that what you were about to say?"

"I meant, sister, that… I don't remember if I ever managed to shape the raw energy I lent into some specific form. Then, of course," another small laugh, "I don't think I ever tried. And certainly not into the one kill which would prevent further kills. But it must be possible." A massive yawn. "Try to control yourself, can you, sister? You managed not to kill me, after all. The toad who wants to eat the swan's flesh—"

Imoen looked at the tall figure in the dark clothes sitting by the dying fire; and said sensibly, "Take the bed, brother. You almost haven't slept yesternight. I'll wake you up in several hours."

_---_

Left to herself, she added to the fire; poured herself the rest of Cernd's invigorating brew, now long cold and completely without taste; cleaned her armour and her sword; skimmed through her spell-book; went for a brief walk around the hut; returned to the kitchen, took out her diary and started to write in it in a completely failed attempt to order impressions and thoughts.

Half the night passed; the diary was closed and hidden in the bags; and an unforeseen problem posed itself.

It felt strange to see her brother curled up on his side in the bed which was far too small for him, sleeping with his face twisted into a feral scowl, the muscles of his left hand, thrown over the deerskin cover, tense, taut and playing right down to the tightly clenched fist, a necklace glittering on his neck in the moonlight, and a trickle of blood running from his nose to stain the white linen of Adratha's pillow; and not only because she knew that, if touched to awaken, this man might possibly swap her like a fly and break her neck without even realising it.

Suddenly, the breathing rhythm changed; and, shortly, she heard an amused voice speak out, without the man ever moving, "Well, sister? What is your decision tonight?" They were thinking the same thing, of course: they were siblings.

She refused to be baited, nevertheless; and, putting her sword and her dagger on top of the large wooden chest standing by the bed, said, "Everything is calm, brother;" and then, as the bed was promptly being vacated, added, "I'm all prepared, so you don't have to wake me early."

He was leaving the bedroom to her, soon and without further word. "There is blood on the pillow!" she yelled after him.

He did not close his eyes; and so, in their treacherous light, she could see the whole procession of feelings on his face: first, a bemused frown; then, an irritated scowl; finally, a distinctly familiar cruel twist around the mouth: amusement. "Then turn the pillow over," he said; and was gone.

Imoen, with a scowl of her own, did; then, slid into the warm, almost hot, bed; and dreamt.

_---_

Irene was sitting on the familiar bridge, a bridge of human femurs cast over a river of blood; and also, the bridge in front of Adratha's cottage. She was dangling her legs over the ledge, and demurely dropping little stones which were not stones but human bones into the river below.

"Hello, Irene," Imoen said, approaching her dwarven sister and sitting next to her.

"You know," she said when she received no reply. "This place. It's no longer scary. I mean, it is, but it isn't. It's… familiar."

A dagger appeared in her hand. She let it drop into the river.

"Good," she heard suddenly. Irene still wasn't looking at her; but she added, "After all, it's you." A femur appeared in her hand; she exerted and threw it far, far away in a high arc.

"No," the dreaming girl disagreed. "I mean. I know this bridge. It's just outside the cottage in the true world. In Amn," she added as it occurred to her that she did not know if this place was not, by chance, also true and real.

"Sure it is, silly," the dwarf said, and smiled her eyeless, lipless smile. "You know every place here. Even if you haven't seen it yet. Unless," she added after a moment, "you don't survive to see them, of course."

Imoen considered this for a moment. "Tell me, Irene," she said at length. "Do you have to look like this?"

The dwarf finally looked at her. "Of course not," she said; and became her living self, with her merry eyes, her chestnut beard and her honest smile.

"I did this," she added, pulling her legs under her chin, "to make you see that I am not really me. All I am is a memory of me in you, and a shadow of myself here in Father's realm. Would you like to see Edwin, by the way?" she asked suddenly. "He's in his laboratory, picking up things after Father's visit."

Imoen considered again. "No," she said. "I don't think so. Not yet, at least." She felt something in her hand; she dropped it into the river absently, without looking at it.

Irene shrugged; and, undeterred, continued, "You, of course, are quickly turning to be his puppet in life… Did you have the time to consider his question?"

Imoen stretched her memory. "Yes," she replied. "I think I did. I was killing Sarevok because that was what I wanted. It wasn't because he deserved it, or because he escaped justice, or for you, or because… anything. I just wanted it. More than anything. There was nothing I wanted more. That's it. Did you ever feel that way?" she asked curiously.

"Yes, of course," Irene replied, turning to Imoen, crossing her legs, and putting her hands under her chin; and smiling. "I wanted to kill you because you were you. So bloody chirpy all the time, running around being so bloody merry when I was waking up after another very bloody dream. And the elves for being so… elvish. And Jaheira for being Jaheira, and Khalid for never telling her to shut up. And I wanted to kill them all just… because. You know."

"I remember," Imoen said, pulling her left leg under her as she turned to her sister, "how you touched that ogre and killed it."

"Yes," Irene replied.

"You said that it made you feel bad."

"Well, now you know how it felt. Good."

"Perfect," Imoen agreed. "How do I stop it?"

The dwarf considered. "No," she said reluctantly in the end. "I can't tell you that. Father doesn't want me to. You have to find out yourself."

"Irene," Imoen pled. "I must know. There's this guy, you see—"

The dwarf's eyes twinkled merrily. "There is?"

"Irene!" Imoen laughed, punching the dwarf lightly in the shoulder. "I've known him all of one day! And we haven't even talked that much. And he has his own problems. And he's ten years older than me, at least. And he has a son—"

"—and you, apparently, know a lot about him," the dwarf finished, also laughing.

The dreaming girl shook her head in disbelief. "Honestly. Between you and Sarevok—"

The dwarf suddenly stopped laughing. "Then you speak with my killer," she said, clearly disappointed; and Imoen felt disappointed in herself, too.

A sudden thought entered her mind, though; but, as she started to frame it into words and speak it out, "Irene—," she felt a sudden tug; and was torn back into Amn, with only the vague aftertaste remaining that she lost something; something extraordinarily important.

_---_

"Imoen!" the irritated voice was saying; and, for a moment, Imoen couldn't quite pinpoint the caller; until, that is, the selfsame, though much more amused, voice said, "Little sister, I would know how, with a sleep like that, all my assassins failed to dispatch of you;" for then, the world was returned to normal.

She opened her eyes, blinked to chase away sleep, and said coolly, "That's what elves are for, brother."

Sarevok looked at her curiously; and said, "Cernd is back, sister."


	16. III: Horses' Move, 5

**Siblings **

**Part III: Horses' Move **

**5 **

_They sang a song at the burial: _

_No light without darkness _

_No dark without light _

_In maturity, the seed of rot _

_From decay, new life _

_All is shadow; stalk the heart of shadow _

_All flows; with time, be healed and be destroyed… _

Blue as the halcyon's wing, writhing like a pit of snakes, sprawling like the poison ivy and delicate as a silken thread, the spider-web of tattoos peeked out of the tattered shreds of the man's clothes. A red spatter of fresh blood from the yet-unclosed incisions and the unnatural pallor of the skin completed the image, moulding Cernd into some kind of an abstract tricolour picture painted on a living human's hide, and projected onto the calm green screen of his cloak, hanging loosely over the back of the chair.

He did not recognise her when she entered; did not say anything; did not even lift his head to look at her. When she came closer, she saw that the pupils of his dry, wildly-gleaming eyes were greatly dilated; when she tried to lift his chin to see them better in the weak candlelight, he tore away his head impatiently, like a rabid dog, shaking his long hair into his face to shield it from the glow. His skin was extremely dry and cold; and constantly shaken by miniature, almost imperceptible spasms.

"Cernd?" she asked, without receiving the answer she did not hope to receive; and then, turning to the old druid, and much more harshly, "What have you done to him? He looks like one giant bruise!" she added, looking to Sarevok for back-up in this particular fray. "What have you done to him in that forest?" she demanded again, angrily, and saw that Pauden backed off a step from her.

The old man scratched his scalp. "It will pass, girl," he said, clearly trying to sound conciliatory while not having had much experience at it.

"It'll pass?!" Imoen repeated, feeling bellicose this early in the morning and straight out of bed. "How's this supposed to pass?! Brother, put him in the bed, will you?" she shot at Sarevok in passing before concentrating the fullness of her attention on the old man again. "Can you please explain to me how this is supposed to pass before we are supposed to set out and how he is supposed to be in a fighting condition when we do?! Can we even heal him, the way he is?" she added belatedly, as she realised that even this might be an issue; and as she realised that she, too, might have played a role in the creation of this work of art.

"The wounds will close," the druid replied, looking rather cowered by the barrage of questions. "He regenerates them even now, as a human— It will pass, girl," he repeated. "It's just the herbs."

"The herbs?" Imoen pressed on.

Pauden sighed deeply, obviously realising that he would neither escape nor defeat this particular huntress, and thus giving up all intent to fly or fight. "He had to take them like this. Strong, I mean, and in the blood— That's what the tattoos are for, see, girl?" he asked. "They both fetter the werewolf and unfetter him when the time comes to release him. It's the herbs that give them the colour. Mostly, the boy now only needs to rub a bit of the paste into the skin to keep the balance between losing the werewolf and losing control over him. But for the final transformation, he needed them straight in his blood again, just like the first time. It should all pass inside an hour or two," he finished, shrugging fatalistically.

Imoen, suddenly again tight-hearted, homed in on the word she liked the least in the druid's speech. "Should?"

"The final transformation?" Sarevok asked at the same moment; and Imoen remembered that he was not aware of this particular detail.

The druid scratched his scalp again. "Well, yes," he said. "He was an unfinished one until now, lad. Afraid the herbs would make him mad, after what happened the previous time— We had to send him over to Tethyr to complete his training," he said, obviously in response to the identical hungry expressions on both faces looking at him. "The first time he tried the herbs at all, he was in a coma for several days. But by then, it was too late to withdraw… We didn't know what the boy had done to himself in the city, see? Otherwise we wouldn't have tried," he finished defensively.

"Cernd's from the city?" Imoen asked, trying to lend some sense to the old man's muddled tale.

Pauden squinted suspiciously at her. "You don't know? What kind of friends of his are you, anyway? Neither from Trademeet nor from Athkatla… Where did you meet him?"

"On the road, as he was returning from Tethyr," Sarevok replied casually; and then, softly probing, added, "But you were saying that he had done something to himself in Athkatla, old man?"

Pauden cackled. "You city rats… You have no idea about how to use herbs, but you have a thousand about how to misuse them. Specially, Black Lotus—" Suddenly, he grew silent; as though he realised that he had said too much in the crossfire of questions.

There was sudden understanding on Sarevok's face; but aloud, he said only, "Then you say, old man, that he feared he might not keep his sanity through this final transformation; but that you are assured he will?"

"So I do, lad," the druid replied. "He was halfway to recovery already when you saw him, girl," he said to Imoen. "Long as I live, I have never seen so easy a rite of passage. All he now needs is a warrior's breakfast when he awakens, to help him fight that madwoman."

"And that would be?" Imoen asked, light-headed and light-hearted again.

"Milk, blood and honey, girl," the druid cackled for a second time. "Milk, blood and honey."

---

Lit by the first rays of dawn, a deer, bled dry through its torn-out throat, lay on the path to Adratha's cottage.

"There are three things which need be done, sister," Sarevok was saying. "There is the goat—"

"Pauden will take care of her," Imoen replied absently. The deer had been killed by Cernd, Pauden had told them; she wished that the murderous part of her self accepted the deer as a sacrifice in lieu of Cernd's life. But killing a deer was not a murder.

Nor was killing Faldorn in a ritual fight, her mind whispered; that was, in a way, what made the whole deal so frightening. There was really only one outcome of the fight which might be a murder: if she had somehow pushed Cernd onto the path which would kill him. And if the only way to prevent it lay with her ability to curb her instincts, then the gamble was as well as lost. She could hope and wish and be intent on saving the druid; but hopes and good intentions did not a day make.

"—Cernd's clothes to be patched and the deer to be skinned and chopped," her brother, meanwhile, was saying; and she felt inclined to hate him for the easy practicality of his thoughts. What right had he to think and speak of patching clothes?

"You prefer the skinning, I take it, brother?" she asked.

"I do not remember ever having performed it, sister," Sarevok replied evenly; and Imoen thought bitterly that this here was, after all, a man who had never had to survive in the wilderness before. Then, she wondered in passing if she should not ask him whether he had experience in flaying a human, and point out that the principle was the same; and then, she realised what she was actually seriously considering.

She blinked, and tried to banish the filthy thought from her mind. The question would not even irritate the unmovable man, but it had come far too easily to her for her liking; and, worse, it brought with it a memory of Irenicus cutting—

An animal was an animal, and a skill necessary to survival was necessary to survival; but there was still enough food in Adratha's cupboard for the breakfast.

"Why don't we put the deer in the stream for now?" she asked. "It'll last these few hours, I think."

To her mild surprise, there was no argument.

---

Instead of an argument, there was the sewing; patching Cernd's tattered soft leather clothes (a by-product of the not completely controlled transformation, the old druid had explained: a terrible itch over the whole body which made one wish to tear off one's clothes and skin before the shape-shifting) with pieces of sleeves of Sarevok's eventually very short-sleeved shirt and Adratha's thick threads and needles.

That; and looking at Cernd and trying to perceive that taint of hers with which she had, or had not, infected him; to no avail.

And yet, she mused as she watched the shivering, cloak-wrapped man—they had not even wiped the blood off of him; Pauden had forbidden it—the tiger-creatures could see her for what she was; and so could Viconia. This meant that there really was something to look for; and if there was, she must learn how to seek it. Yet another feat, like seeing the invisible which Anishai could do, which she would have never believed possible, but which was quickly turning to be essential to her survival—

At least, she now knew what Black Lotus was.

"A powerful, and extremely addictive, narcotic," Sarevok said matter-of-factly when she asked him this as soon as they found themselves out of Pauden's range of hearing. "Illegal, of course; Aran's made a fortune of selling it. But the dens and the traffic are all Bayle's exclusive domain. I'm not surprised that you may not have heard of it before, sister."

Later, when she asked him, he explained the workings of the substance upon mind and body in more detail, in curt, precise sentences; in the end, she decided, it was a good thing that she had lost all her illusions about the noble company of the Shadow Thieves long before.

---

Then, there was only the boredom of waiting for Cernd to awaken while sitting by the kitchen table already dressed in her third, last and most comfortable set of clean clothes—the black, red-rimmed one paid for by Aran Linvail's fortune—under her armour; leafing through the large, heavy tome in which Adratha had written in a large, neat script detailed instructions on the preparations of potions and poisons.

"You like it, girl?" the monkey-like old man asked when he surprised her during the reading, squinting to see the book. "Then take it. You won't find many as can read here, anyway."

He was grinning toothlessly; and Imoen decided to take the suggestion as a peace offering. "Thank you, grandfather," she said, grinning back.

Pauden cackled delightedly. "Wait. The boy told me that you are an archer, too, aren't you? Then I have a better boon for you. If those cats didn't spoil them, that is. Wait here."

He went to the bedroom and rummaged a bit in the large wooden chest standing next to the bed; a moment later, he pulled out a pair of small leather bracers, just Imoen's size. "Adratha had them made and enchanted when she started to lose her aim with the bow," he explained as Imoen eyed them suspiciously. "Try them on, girl," he urged her. "Try them on."

"He is correct," a merry voice reached them from inside the bedroom. Cernd had woken up from his stupor and was stretching himself in the bed; the tattoos on his bloodstained face and hands glittered and writhed with their own life. "Pauden, like the bird of passage who never forgets the way to her winter lodgings, remembers whatever he wants to remember of all he has ever been told." He yawned, and stretched himself again. "And I am hungry, like—"

"—a wolf?" Imoen finished, laughing with relief at the sight; for, apart from the spatter of dried blood and the new tattoos, Cernd looked surprisingly normal. "I'm afraid there is no blood for you, though. Only milk and honey."

Cernd frowned, and asked mildly, "Have you been telling her your stories, Pauden?"

---

The lay of the land was just as Cernd had described to them when they had trekked towards the druid encampment: a village of some thirty houses with walls woven from wicker and withes and covered with turf and mud, lying on both banks of the stream which sprung from the lone crag towering over the village; and which, having passed through the copse of trees they were now leaving, joined with the second, larger stream near Adratha's cottage and then spilled far and wide to create the swamps.

The henge stood on a grassy knoll on the other side of the stream, slightly removed from the camp: all they could see of it now were some tall stones behind the mud-houses on that bank. On their side, a troop of druids was assembling before the village; and, foremost among them, was a blond elf riding bareback on a rose grey mare.

Dalok hadn't noticed them yet; and Imoen, stopping right behind Cernd on the narrow path, had a clear opportunity to shoot at him.

And shoot she did; but—perhaps due to the wind; or perhaps due to a bad aim, caused by the novelty of the weight of the archer's bracers on the archer's forearms; or, finally, perhaps due to some tardy realisation of the archer's that she did not, after all, and against all logic, want to kill a man simply because he stood in her path and rode her horse—the arrow went wide of its target, and hit the earthen wall of the house standing behind instead.

The elf Dalok had noticed the arrow even before it struck; looked in the direction whence it came; noticed the newcomers; and, twirling a long, curved blade in the air and hitting the mare's sides with his feet, charged at them.

The sabre's edge, Imoen noticed as she dropped the bow and shot a volley of magic missiles at the fast-moving target, was licked by tongues of red-hot flames; it scorched her face as it passed centimetres before her face when Sarevok, who had somehow found himself in front her, pulled the elf down from the mare's back, and the elf lost his grip of the weapon.

The mare, freed of her rider, reared, and Imoen backed off from her as quickly as she could to avoid getting kicked by the powerful hooves. In the corner of her eye, she could see that Dalok started to rise from the ground. The next moment, however, Sarevok pulled out his own scimitar and cleanly lopped the elf's head off his neck. It was not even a fight; her brother might as well be simply testing the sharpness of the newly-acquired Calishite steel; and, perhaps, he was.

But Dalok's death turned to be as much of a curse as it was a blessing: for the mare, irritated even further by the smell of blood, was dancing, neighing and kicking, now beyond all control. Or, at least, so it seemed to Imoen, who watched sadly how her bow was broken and treaded into the ground by the horse's hooves.

But then, she suddenly grew aware of an odd sound on the wind. She looked around: Cernd, looking intently at the mare, was half-whispering, half-singing to her in a language Imoen did not understand. With awe, and not a little envy, the girl watched how, little by little, the horse slowly calmed down, and stopped her mad dance, and, at last, even let herself be taken by the piece of twine which had served Dalok as the bridle.

Cernd was perhaps the worst person possible to be a chief, Imoen thought then, as Pauden, who had not moved from his place during the whole commotion, approached the mare and started to squint at her appreciatively. He was too kind. Far too kind. He could fight, there was no doubt of that; and he might win the fight against Faldorn; and Dalok was dead, and would cause no trouble; and that High Merchant Sarevok had mentioned, and whose name she had forgotten, he might be a reasonable man; but Cernd was simply far too kind, and far too soft; and far too quiet. He had the kind of voice which was suited to whispering to horses; and that was precisely the kind of voice which was not suited to shouting over people.

What were they doing to him? she wondered as she watched the druid pat the mare's neck and exchange some quiet words with Pauden which resulted in the old man's taking over the reins. Even if Cernd survived the fight, what were they doing to him? Pushing him into a position where he would never be comfortable; where he never could be comfortable. Playing—no, not at dukes this time; or at kings. But at kingmakers. Or, possibly, at gods.

But it was too late to back off now; and their arrival had attracted more attention. None of the druids who had been with Dalok had come to the elf's aid; but a group of women was heading in their direction.

Their leader was middle-aged, tall and stately. "Celina, Malika's aunt," Cernd said quietly to Imoen and her brother; for Sarevok, too, had rejoined them by this time, and was eyeing the pink mare with assiduousness equal, perhaps, only to Pauden's—though in his case, tinted by ownership rather than admiration. "Is she a danger?" he asked curtly.

"I don't think so," Cernd replied, quite surprised; and then, sounding rather ashamed of himself, added, "She cares for her late sister's child like a bee cares for her queen's."

"Or cared," came the concise response; but this was the end of the conversation, for Celina and her escort were already with them. "Cernd!" the elder said. "You're just on time. Do you know what is about to happen? You do? What are you going to do about it, then? Pauden!" she scolded the old man, without waiting to hear the answer. "Where have you been? Verthan is getting worried. And who are you, you pretty thing?" she turned to Imoen. "Has Cernd finally found another girl for himself? And you, handsome one?" she finished, completing the round inspection of the arrivals on Sarevok, who was following the verbal onslaught with a curious mix of amusement and bemusement on his face. "Who might you be?"

"I'm sorry," Cernd started to say quietly to Imoen; who wanted to tell him that there was no need to apologise—after all, her own family, too, had recently taken to making objectionable allusions regarding her private life—but did not manage to. "Sorry? Nonsense! What for?" Celina said loudly, and started to discuss in detail the terrible things the terrible woman Faldorn had wanted of her.

It was an odd feeling, to walk with this woman, so boisterous and chatty and imperious, and not for a second admitting doubt that the terrible woman Faldorn would be shortly dealt with; and to see Cernd's patched shirt and to remember how he had been not few hours before; and finally, to be constantly aware at some strange, almost physical, level, of the fact and the supposition of what had happened yesternight. Here, in the bright light of noon, in company of others than just Sarevok, matters of tainting people with murder seemed matters from nothing but a story; or yet another evil dream. But Imoen's dreams were terribly real.

Celina, at least, did not press unwanted gifts unto Cernd, Imoen thought; she satisfied herself with utterly embarrassing the man with meaningful questions about his travel and his company, accompanied by more than one meaningful look cast in the girl's direction. But though the woman was talkative and lively, her eyes were all red and puffy; and the faces of all the other women around them, grim.

Later, at the burial, one of them would tell Imoen that Celina had been the staunchest opponent of all Faldorn's ideas, defying the Shadow Druid in ways both open and covert; that she had even tried to send a warning to Trademeet; and that, to quote, "she said that this was one of the few rare moments of her life that she regretted never having learnt how to curse properly."

But this was later; for now, in this queenly escort and in between news and questions—not one of which, Imoen noticed, touched upon the subject of Dalok's body—they finally entered the village of the druids.

---

The maidan was not large, and the grass was already half-eaten; Imoen watched Sarevok watch the, now slightly tarnished, gold of his horse grazing in the distance, and listened to Cernd asking Celina whether his son was well.

Ashdale, Malika's aunt replied, was fine so far; they had treated him well. But Cernd probably would not be allowed to see him before the fight.

"No, I daresay you will not!" a mocking female voice sounded right behind them. "Are you the little man who has come to challenge me?"

They turned around; a woman was standing there, slightly taller and barely older than Imoen, with a tangled mat of dark brown hair on her head and clothed in a dirty, unkempt leather dress. She had a tattoo of her own over her left eye, and a necklace of fangs and claws on her neck; she was barefoot, and was watching them with scorn painted clearly on her face. News spread quickly in the small village; and Faldorn had come to meet them.

Imoen wondered why; for, as the leader, the woman might as well wait and let them come to her. Perhaps Faldorn lacked patience.

"Yes," Cernd, meanwhile, replied calmly to the question. "Unless, like the butterfly, you pupate from the caterpillar which devours a plant's leaves into the imago which pollinates its flowers—I would fight you."

Faldorn laughed shrilly. "What kind of challenge is that? Have you come here to fight or to preach me on the ways of my mother, docile, fireless man? I have heard that my partner is dead; but seeing you, I cannot believe that you should be worth my bother."

Cernd shrugged. "You cannot refuse the challenge, either," he said simply.

Faldorn scowled. "And you think that I would shy away from it? I have taken this grove by force, and by force I will keep it! Come, little man. There is no reason to put this off. Let us enter the sacred ring forthwith!"

Yes, Imoen thought; Faldorn did lack patience.

She looked at Sarevok again; for the rose grey mare rejoined the palomino on the maidan, and both horses were standing now not few steps from the siblings, as if waiting to be led out of the village while Faldorn, Cernd, Celina, Pauden and an old man who, but for the scars, looked just like Pauden, and who must be Verthan, his twin brother; followed by a retinue of men, women and children—all headed for the other bank of the narrow stream; and, once there, for the henge.

For a moment, the man only looked back at her, coolly amused and silent as she was; at length, with a cold smile, he asked simply, "Shall we, sister?"

---

The henge was marked by a ditch; and the curious thing was that, once Cernd and Faldorn crossed it, an impression came on Imoen—precisely that: an impression, for there was no sign of the change to be seen, or heard, or smelt, or felt—that that small circle of turf now lay in a completely different world from its surrounds.

"None can cross within or without until the outcome of the challenge is decided, girl," the druid Pauden, standing to Imoen's left, said. He had cast some spell on himself a moment before, muttering to the girl as way of explanation, "Wouldn't do to miss such a fine fight as must come."

They were all standing in the first line of the crowd of onlookers. The whole village must be gathered there, around the henge, from the eldest to the youngest; parents were holding their children in their arms and on their shoulders to let them see better the coming fight. She tried to guess how many people might be attending; but the number she had arrived at—a hundred and fifty—simply must be too high. How could these many people live off a forest and a swamp?

As for the crowd's sentiments, as far as she could tell, they were divided. There were those gathered closer to Pauden and her: older rather than younger, female rather than male, and with rather than without children. Most of those her age stood on the opposite side of the henge; if the circumstances were any less grave, she would have laughed at the inherent irony of the situation.

The only one possibly less fitting this side of the assembly was the one standing to her right; and not only because his preferred spot, if permitted to choose, would be inside the henge, on the eyes of all and a-fight. But, were one to judge from the glimmer in the eyes and the light, ironic smile playing on the lips, her father's son was rather entertained by the approaching spectacle.

"Hah!" the druid Pauden roared, and Imoen started. "Good opening, my boy! But she also thought of it," he added glumly.

The fight was begun.


	17. III: Horses' Move, 6

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**6**

_The tenth day of Mirtul, 1369, in the druid village_

_The sun has set, which, they say here, means that a new day has started. So, the burial is over and the wake will soon start._

_I never ever want to see something like this again. Watching, but not being able to do anything… It's like Irenicus all over again. It's…_

…frightening. It was frightening. Frustrating and frightening and frustrating—

If she could choose, she would be now inside the henge, on the eyes of all and in fight. But she could not choose. She had to watch. She could not do anything; she, who was used to doing, could not do anything.

Though, if Sarevok be believed, there was one thing she could do.

Eel-like, fast and slippery, a thought crossed her mind; was promptly caught and repeated, repeated constantly, one, two, three, a thousand times, like a mantra:

_Cernd will win. Cernd will win. Cernd…_

_---_

…Cernd was standing inside the sacred ring of stones, in the bright, warm tide of noon-light which suffused the air and stilled the world; his skin, like the skin of his opponent, was itself now like fish scales, metallic and glistening in the sunshine.

For all that appeared, he might not be doing anything; Faldorn, at least, stirred slightly, made the small, edgy movements which a normal body always unthinkingly performs. But the man was standing completely motionless; as if he were simply yet another of the hallowed stones.

Two chants filled this stillness of the noon, low and droning, like an insect's buzzing; now rising, now falling, competing for the world's attention, like two voices performing in counterpoint—

Faldorn finished first; a bright white flash filled the part of the world contained within the henge; a murmur—whether of appreciation or of indignation, it was hard to tell—crossed the crowd.

"That _minx_!" Celina, who was standing with them, in front of Sarevok, almost shrieked out before adding with delight, "But she failed! He's still alive! It's not over yet."

Pauden nodded, "She wanted to end it fast."

"What happened?" Imoen asked. "What are you talking about?"

"She transformed herself into a nymph—" Celina started to speak, but quickly changed the topic, "Wait. Where is he? Do you see him, Pauden?" And, indeed, there was now only one figure visible within the sun-filled ring of stones; Faldorn's. Cernd had disappeared.

The man cackled. "_I_ do," he said. "_She_ does not. She's searching for him. Can't you hear her search for him?"

Faldorn, with her eyebrows furrowed and a deep scowl on her face, was quickly chanting out another spell; in the world on the other side of the stones and the dry moat outside the stones, Celina repeated, "But he's alive. Seeing a nymph can take the life of a man," she said, looking at Imoen and adding bitterly, "That's how Faldorn killed my brother-in-law. Of course—"

"Shh, woman! Be silent!" Pauden interrupted. "Look! Look at her!"

Imoen, who had not stopped looking, saw: saw how Faldorn threw back her head and highly, shrilly, triumphantly laughed, set aflame by the sunshine reflecting in the iron scales of her skin. Saw how then, Faldorn started on another chant, this time forceful, screamed-out almost; at least in those its parts that Imoen could hear. For this song was atonal, and dissonant; and there were moments when the druid's voice seemed to cross beyond the barrier of what a human ear could hear; and of what a human voice should be able to utter.

"She is calling to some creatures, is she not?" Sarevok asked suddenly; and Imoen listened closer to the chant. In a way, it _did_ sound like a summons.

A summons it was; the summons was answered. The turf of the henge moved, first in one place, then, in one more, and then, suddenly, in many more: from the holes in the ground, creatures started to emerge, small and large, but all black, all biting, stinging and venomous: insects, spiders and myriapods. Soon, the whole ground inside the henge was covered by the thick, black carpet; and now, even Imoen could see where Cernd was. The man was still invisible; the scurrying mass creeping onto him was not.

The creatures had almost finished tracing the silhouette in the air when Cernd, at last, revealed himself. He, too, had called for aid: now, everywhere within the henge, the trodden grass and weeds shot out, growing and growing, pushing the spiders and insects aside, entangling the larger of them in small, green cages and carrying others away and off, high into the air; wrapping themselves around Faldorn's ankles and grounding her in spot.

At this, the woman only laughed wildly; and, raising her hands to the sky, yelled out another summons: one long, lingering, rolling word.

The sky darkened, casting a strange shade on the ground within the henge and on the combatants: Imoen, standing without, in the sun-filled world, gasped. A brief, sudden wind moved Faldorn's hair; and soon, from the clouds, a lightning bolt struck straight down on Cernd, whose skin had, by this time, regained its natural colour; whose eyes, sightless after seeing a nymph, watched the world without seeing it; and who almost could not move for the weight of the spiders and insects upon him, insects to which he was chanting in vain, trying to release them from Faldorn's will.

The flash was blindingly bright, and the noise, deafeningly loud; and, though Imoen, led by some presentiment, had closed her eyes and covered her ears just in time, an afterimage still burned into her retina, and a tingle still rang in her ears for the next few moments: she could neither see nor hear. A smell of ozone filled the air: that was the only sensation of which, for a moment, she was aware; of that, and of the word lingering in her head: _datta_.

_But I have given already. Too much, perhaps_, the dazed girl thought nonsensically as she slowly regained her senses and looked around: another murmur crossed the crowd, much louder this time than before, very much like thunder itself. In some places, she noticed absently, some of the onlookers started to cast spells of their own.

But, within the henge, Cernd was still standing in his place. He was bleeding, and quickly being crept upon by another swarm of the crazed insects; but still standing.

"Hah!" the druid Pauden roared loudly again. "That's my boy! It was me as told him that that woman likes to throw around lightning!" he added proudly.

"That's why he disappeared? To cast some sort of protections on himself?" Imoen asked, still trying to forget what the thunder had said; or, indeed, that it had spoken.

"Yes, girl," the old man replied in the sun-filled world; but, within the henge, Faldorn had finished casting another spell: a series of short, crisp words.

Another small wind rose up within the henge; and, shortly, rain started to fall from the darkened sky above. But it was a rain unlike any Imoen had ever seen: a rain of flame and fiery lava, scorching tears which dropped on Cernd and Faldorn and the sacred stones and the overgrown plants and the black carpet of insects writhing on the ground, burning through Faldorn's grass-woven fetters and decimating the ranks of her own allies; and Imoen, though safe and secure, still took a step back at the smell and the sound and the sight of roasting, sizzling meat.

She was not the only one: by now, the crowd's noise had long stopped being a mere murmur. In several places, the circle of gatherers broke as people en masse tried to back off from the henge; parents were hiding their screaming children to protect them; it was a wonder that no one had been trodden into ground yet. Imoen would love to know what Faldorn's supporters were thinking of her now.

For the meat that roasted was not Cernd's, but Faldorn's: while the blind, bleeding, staggering man was still trying to get rid of the insects and the spiders and the myriapods swarming upon him, from the fire, he was, apparently, secure. It was Faldorn whose flesh was perpetually scorched, burned and roasted, and perpetually renewed with the pink of fresh scar tissue, as she, quickly, angrily, yelled out in a low, deep voice one more summoning, this time pointing at the ground.

"She really is mad," Sarevok said at that moment, breaking through the silence of their group, the only isle of silence in the general commotion; and Imoen, surprised by this sudden, strange remark, crooked her head to look at her brother.

The fire burning in his eyes was perhaps only matched by the dancing flames of the inferno blazing now within the henge; and Imoen could not help saying, "She really is a woman after your heart, brother;" but her voice drowned in a second thunder (_dayadhvam_, the thunder said; _I like Cernd, I don't feel anything for him, but I don't hate him, either, I don't want him to die, I want him to win_, Imoen replied, and remembered her forgotten mantra, and said, _he will win_); the thunder, and the earthquake.

The tremor ripped only through the ground within the henge; but the sound of it crossed the invisible barrier dividing the world without from the world within the moat, and nearly shattered Imoen's eardrums again.

"What's she doing?!" the girl yelled out over the tinnitus in her ears and the screams of people. "How can she do all this? How can she _survive_ all this herself?" In front of her, in that tiny slice of burnt-down turf pelted by balls of lava, the closest of the holy stones started to topple; and, shortly, did, with a giant crash. She could not even see Cernd now through the sheets of flame; she was sweating and her heart was beating loudly. She forced herself to tear her eyes away from the henge.

The world was sun-filled and still; and their little group was one of the very few people who had not yet moved from their places.

"She is draining the grove," Pauden said harshly. "We thought that this could happen, the boy and I, if we annoyed her enough…"

"Am I to believe that you planned all this?" Sarevok asked.

"Well, not all this—" the old man started to say; and Imoen could hear in his voice all its undertones: that yes, possibly, Cernd's powers of regeneration could protect him somewhat from the insects Faldorn's allies; and that yes, Cernd had known that Faldorn enjoyed throwing lightning around, and that, if she felt enough contempt for the fireless man, she might wish to kill him with fire; but that, ultimately, though Cernd was still alive, somewhere there in that conflagration, he was blind and bleeding and staggering, and had not even managed to touch Faldorn until this point. And that the woman, completely unaffected by the forces she had unleashed, laughed again and started to yell out another incantation.

The third lightning bolt struck then, this time reminding Imoen in the language of thunder: _damyata_. _Yes, I know_, the annoyed girl thought, _I'm to control myself. But I don't know how! Easy to say: control yourself. I don't want him to die, that's the best I can do. And I don't think it's me who is dangerous to him right now, anyway!_

Then, suddenly, she realised that she was quarrelling with a thunder, which is, from the outset, a futile endeavour; and that, as she had been quarrelling with it, the fiery rain had stopped falling from the sky and the sky had cleared over the henge. The bright rays of the sun of noon now shone over a piece of grassless wasteland covered with a thousand black, twisted carapaces, and surrounded by a ring of stones, some still standing, but most toppled; a light aftershock tore through the ground…

…and, as it did, the scorched earth of the henge suddenly moved again, first slowly, and then quicker and quicker, gathering, moulding and shaping itself into a mammoth, dark, uncouth form which, if it resembled a human at all, it was only in the barest of contours.

"It's an elemental," Celina said, dumbfounded into brevity. "An earth elemental," she added, emboldened by the fact that the creature let out a massive roar which itself sounded very much like an earthquake, and swung one giant fist at Faldorn. "I've heard of them, but I've never seen one before," she continued absently, unaware that no one was paying her much attention. "They say they don't like it when we mortals toy around with their domain…"

"The boy was saying something about a strained host rejecting a symbiont turned parasite…" Pauden replied slowly, unsurely, as Faldorn ducked easily the first blow of the strange creature, and, sneering and snarling, changed abruptly the cadence and tone of the incantation she was casting; and as Cernd, at almost the same moment, started to chant a spell which, to the musically-inclined ear, would sound the precise inversion of the one Faldorn had begun: rising in tone where the other fell, note by note, sound by sound. "I took it all as Tethyrian nonsense… We never had such things in my youth," he added rancorously.

"Nor in mine, Pauden," Celina said, and sighed. "Nor in mine. But all flows, eh?"

"All flows," Pauden agreed sadly. "Adratha is dead. My fool of a brother is the Master of Change, and can't even stand here with me… What are they doing?" he asked suddenly. "I can't see."

Imoen looked from the monkey-like face on her left to the middle-aged one on her right, and felt that she might love these people… if, that is, they would take her.

But the fight was not over yet: the crowd started to gather around them and around the henge again, and her own brother said, without much feeling, "Cernd healed himself. The woman, too, cast some incantation, and is now fighting the elemental."

Imoen looked back to the henge. Faldorn was there, slim and short in her simple, straight leather dress, standing barefoot and erect on the scorched earth, squarely in between the massive arms grinding the air like a pair of flails. A gentle breeze flurried her tangled dark hair as she lifted her head, looking up into the elemental's face with widened eyes, unconsciously biting her lip from the apprehension.

Slowly, tentatively, she touched the giant earthen chest in front of her with her bare left hand; and then, hit it, quickly and lightly, with her bare right; and the elemental fell down and crumbled into the earth and dust from which it had been born.

Then, over the body of her enemy, Faldorn saw Cernd again.

For a short moment, the man and the woman were simply looking each other in the eye; then, Faldorn threw back her head again and, once again, shrilly, madly laughed; and, as Cernd threw himself at her, mid-flight transforming into a werewolf, she transformed herself into a bright, living, human-sized flame.

There was a yelp of pain when the werewolf's jaws connected with the living fire. But Cernd did not let go of his enemy, not even when she set his black fur ablaze with her scalding touch; he held her neck in a tight, tenacious grip as they rolled on the ground, rising clouds of dust and burnt grass and insect skeletons.

The wolf and the flame were fighting, the wolf trying to extinguish the flame and the flame trying to immolate the wolf, now winning the one, and now, the other; but for how long, Imoen could not tell; because the time flowed slower, or faster perhaps, than it should, and all she was aware of was the entwined fiery, rutilant body and the black, sleek body, snarling and barking and crackling and rustling and screeching and moving so fast that she could not really see what was happening, and there was the beating of her heart, and the blood rushing to her head, and the one, two, three, thousand repetitions of the mantra, Cernd will win, he will win, he will, and the thunder's words, _datta_, _dayadhvam, damyata_, give, sympathise, control, and yes, she had given, and yes, she had sympathy, but no, she wasn't in control, and there were bright flashes and black dots on the inner sides of her eyelids, and suddenly, the flame was not a flame, but a woman's body; and it was…

…done, yes; but by no means over.

_---_

"She's dead," Celina said with disbelief. "She's dead, Pauden."

"And the boy?" the old man asked anxiously.

"He's still a wolf. He's alive."

There were cries of joy and relief from the crowd: first, one or two, shy and insecure, here and there; and then, more and more, rising like an earthquake, like a thunder, like a conflagration; like a flood. Imoen, too, was relieved; doubly so: the day was warm and sun-filled, and she felt no different than she had felt yesterday, or two days ago, or a week ago. There had been no coldness and no terrible mystical revelation of some deadly influence of hers upon Cernd—now that she was thinking of the idea, and now that the tension of the moment had left her, she realised how ridiculous it had all been; Father—

Sarevok had been wrong. Or, possibly, he had played a cruel joke with her. She could certainly believe that.

She was hungry.

The shouts coming from the crowd slowly started to change in tone, from joy to agitation. "What is happening?" the druid Pauden asked.

"Cernd isn't getting up. And he hasn't shifted back into a human, either," Celina said.

Within the henge, the werewolf still lay on the ground, with his jaws still clenched upon Faldorn's neck. Imoen blinked; but no, she really hadn't done anything. She had a vague feeling that she would have felt something if she had done anything. She should. She just should.

"So what—" she started to ask; but at the same moment, Pauden asked in trepidation, "And my foolish brother? Has he come out?"

"Out of where, old man?" Sarevok's voice rumbled above their heads. Imoen looked at the man: he did not seem particularly moved by all that had just happened. But that, perhaps, was to be expected.

"Out of that cave where he sits and does his fool's job as the Master of Change, lad!" Pauden replied, irritated.

"No," Celina replied quietly. "He didn't. The challenge is undecided, Pauden. Cernd isn't a human."

"So what?" Imoen repeated. "Faldorn's dead. He won. He'll get up in a moment. He's probably just regenerating himself. Can't he regenerate himself easier as a werewolf?" she pled.

"He can," Celina replied. "He would have, by now. He would have stood up, too."

The crowd was now buzzing like a swarm of agitated bees. "So what?" Imoen repeated, uncomprehending.

"The boy's lost, girl," the druid Pauden replied gently, in the same tone he had used when he had told Cernd about Faldorn's plans for his son. "Lost. Doesn't know if he's wolf or human. The mind's human, but the body's wolf, and he's… lost. Can't move a muscle. It sometimes happens to them young ones, if they have trouble shifting. He was wrong to try to fight like this so soon, after all," he added sadly. "Must've upset the balance—"

"Upset the balance?! But that werewolf's Cernd!" Imoen nearly yelled out. "He's there. Lying there. After a fight. Can't someone go and make him into a human if he can't?"

"Well, girl," Pauden scratched his naked scalp, "Someone could go there, but… that would be entering the challenge plane, see? And if the grove accepted him already…"

"But if the grove accepted him as the— the symbiont, this means that the challenge is over, doesn't it? That he's the head?" Imoen asked, uncomprehending.

"He cannot be the leader if he isn't a human," Celina replied; and, as if she were talking to a child, repeated, "The challenge is undecided. Verthan's still in the cave."

"So, is he the head of your clan or isn't he?" Imoen asked, feeling as if the druids and she were talking at cross purposes in two different languages.

Pauden scratched his scalp again. "Well, girl… Both."

This time, Imoen did yell out. "Both?! How can he be both?! Aren't these, like—"

She shook her head. She was, after all, talking to people who could be both humans and wolves. "I'm going there," she said instead, forcing herself to be calm. "If no one else does, I'm going there."

She looked around the crowd; which had, in the meantime, grown oddly quiet, and was—as possible as it was for a crowd of over hundred people—listening on the conversation. "What?" she shouted at the people. "Is he supposed to die there slowly, from hunger? Can he die at all? Have you thought of that? What will happen to you if he can't?"

"City rat… no appreciation for the ritual…" she heard Pauden mumble; and felt not merely angry, but furious.

"You do not stand between an animal and its death," Celina added sadly, as if she were quoting something she did not entirely agree with, "You do not stand in the path of the ritual."

"They would never accept him later, girl," Pauden finished; and Imoen narrowed her eyes. "So it's doable—" she started to say; but was interrupted by a light laugh.

"Believe me, sister," Sarevok said, stretching himself lazily, like a lion after a good afternoon's sleep, "it is no purpose arguing with old people… Mistress Celina," he added delicately to the woman standing in front of him, "Hie to the Master of Change and make sure that when Cernd leaves the henge, he will be pronounced _and_ recognised as your chief. I would not that my time here were wasted," he added coldly, casting an equally cold look around the gathered people; and raising a small commotion as several men standing closest to them backed off a step and fell into those standing behind them.

The woman herself, however, was undisturbed. "_When_ he leaves the henge?" she asked sceptically.

Sarevok laughed again. "Yes," he replied; and, looking at Imoen with amusement, added, "I believe that my sister is about to do something impossibly foolish and heroic. And I would not that her time were wasted, either."

_---_

She bit her lip and clenched her fists and told herself that she had not needed her brother to intimidate those people into submission; and that she had decided to do what she was doing now long before he had even spoken a word, and that he had, at most, followed. It still smarted.

That was why, when she was climbing the inner side of the moat and heard someone heavy jump down the outer side, she almost barked out, without even looking back, "Stop stalking me. I don't need you."

There was a brief silence filled by climbing the gravel into which the turf had changed on this side; followed by an amused voice saying, "I don't think so, little sister. But that is irrelevant."

"Irrelevant," Imoen deadpanned, straightening up and brushing the gravel off her hands. "What I want is… irrelevant. Of course."

"Indeed," Sarevok, standing up next to her and looking around the henge with a sharp, scowling face, agreed easily, ignoring entirely the sarcasm. Then, as Imoen was about to ask him what happened to his once-favourite phrase—_as you wish_—his face suddenly smoothed out and he added, laughing, "Well, sister… We are within. What is your plan now?"

Cernd and Faldorn were lying not few steps from them, in the scalding heat of the dry air above the wasteland. Tiny, curled-up husks crunched under the siblings' feet as they walked around a toppled megalith to get to the bodies; here and there, a blackened blade of grass still somehow stay put in the ground.

Cernd was much larger now than he had been in Adratha's cottage—or perhaps it was just that now, Imoen could see him better than there, in that weak light; but no, Pauden had said something about completing something, some—her fists clenched again—_ritual_.

His fur was still black, long and lush, like his hair; his snout was still long and his jaws, clenched tightly upon Faldorn's neck, snarling, full of long, white fangs. He looked, perhaps, very much like a tired dog; and, for a very short moment, Imoen thought ridiculously that he might wave his tail or lift his muzzle and whine at her when he saw her—because he certainly could see her: his eyes, now neither black nor golden, but red and bloodshot, were open.

But Cernd could not move. He was locked inside his body, watching, hearing, but unable to do anything. Imoen shuddered, remembering—

"Well, sister?" Sarevok repeated, straining himself to open the werewolf's mouth, "What say you? Because," he added slowly, wiping off the sweat from his forehead after putting Cernd and Faldorn, now separate, on the ground, "for all I told that cattle—"

"He looks fine," Imoen interrupted him. She combed her palm slowly through the dark fur, and added, thoughtfully, "I think that we might try to heal him. And if it doesn't work, well…" She shrugged. "None of them will come here," she said, trying not to think of her brother's epithet for those people, standing out there. Even they did not deserve it. Possibly.

"I didn't do it, by the way," she said suddenly. "Nothing happened. You were wrong. Were you wrong?" she asked, looking straight into her brother's eyes.

He shrugged. "This is yours to decide, sister," he said offhandedly; then, frowning, changed the topic. "Where will you heal him? The head? The stomach, possibly… The tattoos united there. It may be a significant spot."

Imoen looked back to the stretched lupine body and blinked, wondering for a moment what kind of mind was prepared to apply ruthless logic to a mesh of tattoos; but, feigning indifference, said aloud only, "Both, I think."

There was no reply this time; and so, coldly, she asked, "Why did you wait for me to set off before following, brother?"

There was a lightly amused laugh. "I was curious if you would act on your words. They are right, after all…" Sarevok nodded in the vague direction of the crowd Imoen had almost completely forgotten about. "Rituals have power, if they are followed."

"Well," Imoen replied matter-of-factly, ignoring the implications of his words; she was as prepared for a fight as she ever would. "Now, I'm curious if you will act on your words, brother."

Her brother's eyes glimmered. "I might. I have said many words in my life. Some of them contradicted each other."

"I will not ask," Imoen said sharply. "So, if you want me to beg, stuff it."

Sarevok laughed. "Why, sister… This would rather imply that I cared for your opinion, would it not? Take the head," he said, and, feeling along the lupine body, started to search for the stomach and the solar plexus; where, some say, one's sense of shape, size and intent hides.

_---_

Imoen was remembering how to heal, how to use those meagre powers which were all she had, and all Cernd had, right now, because they were all surrounded by healers, but none of the healers around them dared disrupt the ritual. How come normal, decent people lost all sense and sensibility when turned into a crowd was beyond her. Her brother might tell her: he thrived off it, after all.

He was, perhaps, himself trying to heal Cernd now of the odd affliction, with a scowl and a wince and a bit of blood flowing out of some small broken vessel on his face; but Imoen was already feeling the coolness of the healing energies flowing through her from that place somewhere deep within, that place which she visited regularly in her dreams, and very rarely in the awakened world.

There really was a conduit between her and Cernd, she realised without much surprise: a thin, silver thread of a connection, a cold rivulet and a moon's ray. But, yes, the healing…

The little bit was not enough, she realised. But there was a place to get…

…more, yes.

_---_

"Hello, Cernd," she told the blinking man and smiled. "Get up, you lazy wolf."

"What?" Cernd asked ridiculously, as most dazed people do. Then, very much like a dog still, he shook his head; the feathers in his hair were matted and spoilt and in all the wrong places, she noticed. He would have to throw them all away.

"You won your fight," she said. "Remember? There was a fight."

Cernd frowned. "Yes," he said slowly. "Faldorn… She was powerful, like a forest fire. Too powerful. In the end, all I could do was let her consume herself."

Behind him, Imoen saw Sarevok, eyeing the woman's body with a light look of tender curiosity, turn around, crook his head and cast a very similar look at Cernd. "In the end, the woman was mad," he said dryly before adding, "You must go out there, druid. They await you."

"I know," Cernd sighed. "I'd rather not to. But you cannot go with me."

Sarevok was still watching him with cool interest. "No," he admitted. "We have harmed you enough already, druid."

At that, Cernd laughed, and, looking from the one face to the other, said, "And I haven't even thanked you for that yet! I really am today unmannered like the snail, hidden deep within his own shell, unmindful of all that happens around him—"

"That's… well, reasonable, I guess," Imoen said, frowning. "There has been this small matter—"

"Sister," Sarevok said suddenly, cutting her short. "There have been several matters, druid," he said to Cernd. "Your victory may be disputed. Mistress Celina," he laughed lightly, "is a formidable ally, but even she can sway at most half the village in your favour—"

"Brother," Imoen said sweetly; and then, to Cernd, "I mean, Ashdale…"

"Ashdale?" Cernd said; and, as if only remembering the name, repeated, "Yes. Ashdale. My son. It was all for him, after all. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood—"

"—and bone of your bone, yes, druid!" Sarevok interrupted, suddenly irritated. "But you will be useless to him as this wet, spineless slime you are now! Rouse yourself. You won. This is the only thing that counts. Now, go and reap the spoils of your victory."

He tore off from the ground and, with a quite disgusted scowl on his face, crossed the henge and sat on one of the overturned stones. Imoen, mentally adding this moment to the growing list of things her brother would one day answer her for, said nonetheless, "Look at him, Cernd. See? All you have to do is scream a bit, and change into the werewolf from time to time, and things will work. You will manage."

For a moment, there was only a sympathetic, easy silence in the warm, light-filled afternoon; and then, as Imoen was about to speak up again, Cernd said suddenly, "I had better go. All flows, the great cycle moves on, and we cannot sit here all day… Even if I would," he added, smiling privately.

Imoen watched as the calm, subdued man stood up and went on to face the people who did not especially welcome him or, perhaps, entirely deserved him; and the duties to which, perhaps, he was not really equal; and, just as Cernd was leaving the henge and she suddenly had the oddest feeling of the world snapping back into its place—she found the cold, silvery, watery moonlight thread and _pushed_, as strongly as she could; though how strong that was, even she could not tell.

Cernd lifted his head and, with a much springier step, went on to confront his destiny.

_---_

The destiny involved, it seemed, a lot of talking.

They left the henge when the attention of all was concentrated on Cernd, as far as possible from the crowd as they could; circled the henge, as inconspicuously as possible, which proved very easy for Imoen and very difficult for Sarevok, even in his soft, dark-brown boots; and filed into the fringes of the crowd. By that time, the old man Verthan, Pauden's twin brother, had emerged from the cave where he had fulfilled his duties as the Master of Change, and was pronouncing the verdict proclaiming Cernd as the victor of the fight, and the chieftain recognised by the people and the grove.

Shortly, Cernd finally learnt of the plague with which Faldorn had visited Trademeet; and, having learnt of it, sent a pair of envoys—druids who promptly turned into a sparrowhawk and a falcon—to the High Merchant Logan Coprith in Trademeet and to the druids around Trademeet, informing the former of the unilateral armistice and asking for peace, and ordering the latter to cease and desist the attacks, withdraw the plants and animals and aid the messengers in getting the message through to the inhabitants of the city.

There were other scouts: two women volunteered to find the cave where Imoen and Sarevok had spent the night of the storm, and bring back the ornate saddles the siblings had left there. Some men, led by Pauden, hied back to Adratha's hut for the deer and the travellers' bags; and then, finally, there were those who would recover the bodies, if bodies were there to be found. If not, everyone knew, nature would welcome them; but an effort must be made: Kyland Lind, and Tehawanka, and Mem'en gwa, and Ah'mik, who were those who had attacked them together with Kyland Lind, had not been without families. There would be a burial; and then a wake; and then, the druids would return to the forest where they should live at this time of the year, when it was not ordinary that rituals take place.

_---_

The burial was, for Imoen, an odd affair. She did not know Adratha, or the other dead; save, perhaps, for Dalok and Faldorn, and that, only briefly. Cernd bore the bodies of his enemies no ill will, and had ordered them buried with the proper respect, even if slightly removed from the common grounds. Which was, Imoen supposed, the right, the correct and the politic thing to do.

But then, the druids were sitting together in small groups which formed and unformed, merge and broke, lazily, unhurriedly, like water passing through a swamp; talking and singing and speaking of the dead; and Imoen felt lonely: she was not one of the people, and had no memories to barter. Cernd must be with them, out in the open; and Sarevok had disappeared somewhere. She would have thought that he did not enjoy seeing the faces of his victims; but this was the heir apparent to the Throne of Murder of whom she was thinking.

For a very brief moment, she considered the idea that he had simply taken the horses and left, leaving her behind in the village; and, in the end, completely did not know how much of a curse or a blessing that would be. Life here flowed slowly, and there was some appeal to that; but, in the end, she decided, she was a city girl—a city rat, as Pauden would say, she thought with a small smile. And, like, before, in the thieves' guild, there was the feeling that, in the end, her destiny would find her even she would not seek it; a Child of Bhaal could know no respite.

She was on the maidan, looking at the grazing horses and thinking the lonely thoughts, when Celina found her. The woman, sounding at first rather shamed, and then, when she realised that Imoen, for the most part, did not really feel angry at her anymore, more at ease, told Imoen that she had been told by Cernd that Imoen had once known a Khalid and a Jaheira of Tethyr; and that there were some in the village who had once known them, and if not them, then of them, and who would speak and know of them, if Imoen would listen and speak to them; and so, the rest of the day was spent lazily, unhurriedly, speaking, listening, trying to remember, and learning new tales of old friends long gone.

And, in a way, that was a good thing; especially when Cernd, who, as anyone, was walking and meandering between the circles of people, came to listen to them and sat with them—for a moment, she wondered whether he had time at all to spend with his son; not much, she suspected; but, perhaps, he would now have more. It was a good thing; it was, perhaps, a much better headstone to her friends' grave than that anonymous memorial, back in Athkatla: their memory, spread among those who had once known them; and passing the news of their death to those who might, one day, follow it to those who should be told.

But there was a note of silence in the tales; and it irritated Imoen all the more for that it had come of her. "How did they die?" the druids had asked, and "Fighting a madman in Baldur's Gate, who had nothing on them but his strength," she replied; and herself wondered why she had not said instead, "The man and the woman who did away with the slaver Ployer of Calimshan? My brother killed them as they tried to protect me, first the man and then the woman, skewering them on his sword like pigs, bathing in their blood and laughing as he did so." Which, after all, was the exact truth.

It itched her, almost physically, like the newly formed skin under a scab itches, demanding to tear off the scab and reopen the wound; and so, when the scouts returned with their things, and the sunset approached, signalling the end of this day, the burial and the fast, and the begin of the next day, the wake and the feast—still angry and irritated, she went to the house the druids had given for her and Sarevok's use, and started to occupy herself with separating the wheat from the chaff: her things from her brother's.

_---_

The wake brought with itself a change of scenery and a change of mood: it took place on the maidan, and was full of roasted deer, baked fish, fresh vegetables, weak beer and fruit wine from Adratha's stocks. Cernd had disappeared completely, and Sarevok had reappeared suddenly; and, having devoured an absolutely terrible amount of food, disappeared again, with a rather, to Imoen's eyes, vulgar-looking, big-breasted brunette on one arm and a tall, slim blonde on the other; casting behind only a lightly amused glimmer of a look in his sister's direction.

Said sister was currently feeling bored by being accosted by some terribly brash young man—who, nevertheless, she thought cynically, had never entered the ring of challenge, not even to help the man who had been lying there helplessly; then, shortly, was rescued from the bluster and the bravado by some long-haired half-elf redhead. The redhead made no pretence at brashness, and her kiss tasted sweetly like the first wild strawberries of Mirtul; still, Imoen could not help but excuse herself as politely as she could, and move on into the revelling crowd.

"He should be here," she then heard the familiar voice of the druid Pauden through the slight haze of alcohol which helped alleviate the terrible itching. "He should be here. When I was young—"

"Oh, stop whining, old man!" she heard the sister-in-law of the former chieftain reply. "He was out and about all day. He deserves to be with Ashdale now, at least."

Imoen halted in her tracks, turned around, a little too strongly than she perhaps should, and headed for the village.

_---_

Cernd was there, sitting on a bearskin rug straight on the floor of his hut, watching with a fascinated look a completely normal, dark-haired, dark-eyed toddler playing by the fire with a wooden toy. The child was, perhaps, sitting slightly too close to the fire; but Cernd was, perhaps, the kind of father to spell a protective enchantment over his child for just such an occasion.

He looked up when she hesitated in the door opening, suddenly unwilling to disrupt the family scene.

"Imoen!" he said, and smiled. "Why aren't you at the feast? Come in!"

She did; Cernd scooped the boy from the ground, leaving it open for her to sit; and then, putting the child in his lap, he said to her, "Meet Ashdale. Ashdale, this is Imoen."

Imoen looked at the toddler and smiled. "Hello, Ashdale."

She had better not be drunk around a child, she decided with some small reluctance; and, having cleansed the alcohol from her blood, sobered up. At least she would not have a hangover tomorrow.

The boy looked at her and said something she did not quite understand, but which, given his tone, must be a greeting. He was rather pretty, and would be tall, like his father, she decided while Cernd was saying, "Ashdale, Imoen here is your godmother. I think," he added merrily, "that you'll accept this post, will you not? And your brother—"

"—No," Imoen interrupted, suddenly glad that she was sober. The itching had returned, but she needed a clear head for what was about to come. "Trust me. Sarevok is the worst person around to charge with the protection of your son. Even if it's only a symbolic one."

Cernd was looking at her uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

The itching suddenly reached a monumental size at the sight of this unassuming innocence. "Because," she said matter-of-factly, "he's an unrepentant, arrogant, self-serving, murderous bastard, that's why."

Cernd blinked several times; and Imoen, foreseeing the inevitable objections of the man who preferred to take the middle ground even where there was none, said quickly, "You don't believe me, do you? Well," she said, finally tearing off the scab: for, after all, why should she hide the truth? For the sake of what? Sarevok's little games? "Khalid and Jaheira. You heard it when I was telling of how they died, didn't you? What I didn't say was that Sarevok was the one who killed them. And it wasn't pretty, believe me, I was there. And, before that, Gorion—I don't know how much you heard in the hut, but that's mostly what that was about. He killed him. And a lot of people recently in Athkatla. And—yes, do you know why we're together at all? Ask him. He'll tell you. He won't deny it if you ask him. He wants something from me, I don't know what that is, but he wants it, and what I want is… irrelevant. That's what he said, even today, you know? And you may think that he's nice, but he's not. He just enjoys it when people think that he's nice, because then he can use them. And he feels better, I guess…"

She interrupted, because there was absolutely no reaction to her words on Cernd's face; and so, unhappily, she repeated, "You don't believe me, do you? I think I'll go now… I'm just making an idiot of myself," she finished, getting up. "Goodnight."

On the ground, Cernd, with the small, odd frown which sometimes graced his face when he was about to calmly accept something utterly unbelievable, replied, "But I do believe you."

Imoen blinked. "You do?"

Cernd looked up at her and smiled wistfully. "Yes, I do."

He kissed lightly the top of his sleeping son's head, and, looking into the fire, started to speak quietly, "Ashdale… I did not always live here, among the druids…"

Imoen slowly sat down by the fire again as he spoke on, "Once, I used to live in Athkatla, with my wife, Gala. We… were not a happy people, and eventually, like a pair of fish stranded in a desert, we found our happiness only in Black Lotus. Do you know what that is?" he asked, looking at Imoen.

"Yes, I do," she replied, and felt a spark of anger cross her mind at the recollection of the Aran Linvails of the world.

"One day, I—I don't know what happened. I decided to leave the city. Just like that. Gala… she wouldn't come with me, and I didn't want to stay and try to convince her, because I knew that then, I wouldn't find the strength to leave the city myself. A starved horse can pull a cart only so far… I left. I came here. I was sent to Tethyr to finish my instruction. They found some use for me… I was to be a bird-of-flight, an envoy. On my first mission, I found myself back in Athkatla… It was not the kindest of homecomings."

He stretched his left hand—the hand on which Ashdale was not sleeping—towards the fire, which rose to meet it and entwined itself around it lovingly, casting strange shadows on the walls of the hut. "My wife had given birth in my absence; then, she had sold her son—because then, it was only her son to me—to a nobleman by the name of Deril; and then, she had killed herself with her addiction. I… saw the boy, by chance. I think that it was then—"

He interrupted again, and looked at the toddler; in his lap, Ashdale shifted slightly in his sleep. "I do not know what Deril did to him," Cernd spoke on calmly, "I just hope that I will be able to undo it… But Deril was the kind of man as you say your brother is: a wolf who does not understand the importance of the pack, and a wolf in a sheep's skin… All the adoption documents were in complete order; and there was no certainty that Ashdale was my son at all. I was a stranger and a druid—the envoy of the Grand Druid of Tethyr, but still a druid, without any," he laughed, quietly and bitterly, "steady source of income to speak of; Deril was a local man, a nobleman, a rich man. And there was my infamous past to take into account… Suddenly, once I started caring, I found myself suffering for all my past sins, for all that which I had thought left behind and unimportant, melted like the yesteryear's snow…"

He fell silent, and remained silent, gazing into the fire; in the end, Imoen felt compelled to ask, "What happened then?"

Cernd smiled, briefly and bitterly, "I was back to all my old haunts in the Copper Coronet in no time, drinking and complaining to all loudly about my plight… There is a Lotus den there, in the back rooms, with the finest and the most expensive assortment in the whole Athkatla. I was seriously considering asking Lehtinan to let me in there—I still had some money given to me for my, by then utterly forgotten, task… It was then that the Fentan Knights found me."

"The Fentan Knights?" Imoen asked, frowning.

"You don't know about them?" Cernd asked, casting a sudden, surprised look in the girl's direction. "You really don't know the first thing about Trademeet, do you? The Fentan Knights are a group of…" He shrugged lightly. "Adventurers? Fortune-hunters? No, that is the wrong word… Their leader, Mazzy Fentan, is a servant of Arvoreen… Mostly, they just try to do good, I think." He smiled. "However that sounds. But they listened to me."

He transferred Ashdale skilfully to the other hand; the boy let out a small whimper of protest through his sleep, but did not wake up.

"They found me in the Copper Coronet, the wreck of a man I was intent on becoming, destroying all the boons Nature had given me in the drive to destroy my memories… They listened to me on one night; on the next, I was holding Ashdale, and was being told to leave Athkatla, never come back, and ask no question about Deril. I listened… Like a beaten-up dog, I listened: I tucked up my tail and ran away. I left my son here, and left for Tethyr to try and straighten out my matters… I was returning from that trip when I found you. Or," he smiled again, "when you found me. I don't think I would have managed to do half as much as I did without you. In fact, I think I would be dead now; I'm not a strong man," he said, with such matter-of-fact self-deprecation that Imoen could not help thinking that, soon, he and everyone else might be in for a big surprise.

Suddenly, Cernd laughed merrily; and then, quickly ran a hand above his son's head when Ashdale whimpered again. "If this is the kind of chaos you bring into people's lives when you happen to them…"

"No," Imoen said, laughing, too; though somewhat more sadly. "Usually, it's the other kind, I'm afraid."

A brief twitch crossed the man's face. "Well," he said, looking at Imoen mischievously, "We were speaking of your brother, and here I somehow ended up telling you the tale of my life, long and drawn-out like the tail of a shaggy dog…"

Imoen burst out laughing.

"I meant," Cernd said, now completely serious again, "that the wake is almost over; and since the wake is over, it is time for sleep. And now, you know all I have to offer: a man possibly ten years older than you, with a son he let mutilate in his childhood and an infamous past. That's all; and, at most, affection, not love," he finished simply, and shook his head. "Not love; there has not been the time for it."

_---_

It was not love; it was, at most, affection, which is never the same thing and rarely enough.

That night, to one scarred body and soul, it was.


	18. III: Horses' Move, 7

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**7**

_Eleventh day of Mirtul, 1369, Vyatri's Pub, Trademeet_

_The candle is spluttering. I should probably go conjure some light, or something_

_It's_

_That __bastard._

_---_

"Like dawn," the girl's voice echoed incredulously.

"Yes," the man affirmed matter-of-factly. "Rosy-haired, like dawn. Are you sure that you are not the future Goddess of Dawn?"

The girl laughed. "A Child of Lathander? Afraid not."

"The two-faced goddess…" the man mused. "The grim, exigent huntress and the playful dawn. Death and renewal. Subsistence and change. The deer and the swan—"

"Cernd!" the girl protested, slapping the man lightly on the shoulder; then, with a slight frown, asked, "Is _that_ how you see me?"

The man shrugged lightly. "I would, if you were a goddess. But you are a human. I think that he's asleep again," he added, rising from the bed lithely to put his son into his cot.

She watched him as he was standing over the little crib filled with deerskins treated so that they would be soft like wool and fluff: the tall, naked, long-haired man covered in a spider-web of blue tattoos, almost black in this soft, subdued light of dawn; and a small smirk crossed her own face as she remembered that last night's moment of quite girlish curiosity when she had been wondering whether he was really tattooed _all_ over; before she had learnt the answer.

There really was a knot of them over the stomach, she now knew; and, perhaps, it was a significant spot; but, in a way, it did not really matter whether Sarevok had been right, or wrong, in that, too. There were more important matters.

Cernd was quickly revealing himself to possess also a viciously sentimental streak, in addition to all the other things that he was; and, before she left, she must make sure that, when the proper time came, it would not trump his practicality. He needed a woman, someone to share his life; and, however good a father he might be, she would rather her godson had a mother. (She had been quite surprised when the thought had first occurred to her: where did it come from? She did not know her own mother, and, between Winthrop and Gorion, there had been no shortage of affection in her childhood.)

And that woman—a slight pang of jealousy pricked her heart at the thought of that unseen, unknown, for now unrealised face—she must be fair to her, too. She must have Cernd whole, not pining for the memory of a night spent with a—she snorted—goddess.

Cernd turned around and frowned lightly; and she realised that she had snorted aloud.

"Nothing," she said. "Come back to bed. It's cold. I was just thinking," she said, as he did, "that I had better not have to enlist Celina into finding you a wife."

Cernd looked at her oddly. "I told you," he said, with some small shame. "It was…"

"…affection, not love," Imoen finished, with a mixture of relief and regret; or, possibly, regret and relief. "It's just that you do affection the good way. Although," she smiled, kissing him lightly, "I could have done without being woken up at dawn. Not that it's not a nice dawn," she added quickly.

Cernd looked at her, and laughed; and then, quickly, hungrily, kissed her again.

_---_

It had been Ashdale who had woken them up, turning and tossing and crying in some private nightmare; and Cernd had decided not to spell him into sleep, and, instead, had tried to calm him down with his touch and his voice and the heat of his body; which had not worked immediately, as a spell would have.

This meant that, for the second morning in a row, Imoen had been woken up early; and the morning before that had been the morning she had first met Cernd, after that night in the cave, after that day when she had killed Edwin Odesseiron, her brother, and murdered Viconia deVir, her enemy. It seemed, somehow, like a much longer time; perhaps because it was full of all sorts of odd memories: happy, and sad, and simply… odd.

Still, life went on: all flowed, as the druids here would say—and when, quite some time after dawn, Cernd said calmly, "You will be leaving after breakfast," she took his words as they were intended, as neither discharge nor disappointment; and replied only, in the same tone, "Yes, I will."

Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up. "I think that I have the _best_ farewell gift for my godson! It's a helm… Its previous wearer— Well, no, that was Sarevok, but—"

She fell silent; because she had mentioned a name; and now, the mood was shattered and gone. Cernd shifted himself in the bed, in that casual, relaxed half-sitting, half-leaning sprawl which made it so easy and so simple to snuggle next to him, and said slowly, "Yes. Your brother. I will kill him."

At which, Imoen first, blinked; then, started; finally, asked, _"What?!"_

Cernd looked at her with a small frown. "I will kill him. I know that you have to go. That you want to go, or that you feel that you have to go… But, at least, you will go alone."

"I won't," Imoen shook her head. "_You_ won't."

"I will," Cernd disagreed with her simply. "The bond with the grove is almost dissolved… Nilthiri is free, and herself again. But I am much stronger now myself, like an adult bear is much stronger than the cub. I will win the fight easily."

"But he's mine!" Imoen protested. "Mine," she repeated, frightened by what she saw.

There was now an edge to Cernd—or, better said, all Cernd was now changed, much harder, much more pointed, all sharp angles and sharp edges, no longer as easily falling in with the background as he usually did; even if, physically, he remained completely unchanged.

_When you returned, you were cold and he was changed_, she heard the echo of her brother's voice. _Do you know how cold your other self is, sister?_

"Is there a reason why you have to be the one who kills him?" the sharp man asked meanwhile, again with a small frown; as if he were pondering an unexpected setback.

"He hurt me," Imoen replied automatically. "He killed my sister and my friends."

The man's brow smoothed out. "Then it is not a material difficulty? In that case—"

"But he's mine!" Imoen repeated stubbornly. "Don't you understand it, Cernd? He's mine. Mine to kill. When I want to."

Cernd mouthed a small, bitter grimace; and, pulling himself under the wall of the room, so that their faces were again at the same level, asked calmly, looking her straight into the eye, "But will you want to?"

"It is… like an herb. A narcotic. Black Lotus," he said, for a moment slightly gentler and almost the old Cernd again, when Imoen, indignant, did not reply to the accusation. "It grows on you. You become accustomed to it. And, after a time, you do not realise how harmful it is. Want more of it, even."

"I am not Ashdale, Cernd," Imoen said pointedly, shaking her head again. "I am not your son. I am not a child. I am not defenceless. You do not have to protect me. And I know my mind. We would not be having this conversation if I did not," she reminded the man, who immediately grew much sharper and much more pointed.

"But until the time you decide to kill him, he will hurt others," he said sensibly; and it hurt when he did so; and not only because he was telling the truth, or because he was throwing back her own words about Faldorn at her; and not even because she knew that if she had killed Sarevok back there, in the cave, all the things which had happened since that time would not have happened—because, just as easily, other, much worse and darker things might have happened instead, and she had had no way of knowing then which ones these would be—but because, and this, she did say aloud, desperately, "But why you? Why you? Why does it have to be you? He likes you. He did nothing to you."

Her brother, perhaps, took nothing but a passing fancy to a man who had helped them and a man who, he might have thought, in no way would stand between him and his destiny, and was thus safe to take a passing fancy to; and he had, perhaps, not done much good for him, at that; but he had done nothing evil, either. If anything, it had been she who had messed with Cernd; and out of pure sympathy. But, she thought bitterly, not tempered by control.

"I like him, too…" Cernd was replying as she thought so; and then, quickly correcting, "Liked. But there is this aggression in him, this fire which is like Faldorn's, this… You did say that he was mad, was he not?" he asked, suddenly looking back up at Imoen; who just now only realised again that she was sitting naked in a bed; and that, though it was already long after dawn, she was cold.

"I liked him," Cernd repeated as his bedfellow was guiltily thinking about arguing that, whatever Sarevok's affinity for Faldorn, in the end, he had stood on Cernd's own side; but the sharp, pointed man was already saying something else, "But I saw him, and I can believe that all you say is true, and that he is nothing but a cuckoo's egg mimicking a bird's own until the fledgling hatches and throws his foster siblings out of the nest. He did nothing to me; but he had murdered elsewhere, you say, and there was a druid among those he murdered. I liked him; but he is a powerful man, both in strength and in skill and among people. I am more powerful than he is; but where will he next find his equals, willing to fight him? Even you cannot fight alone an army," he said, smiling at Imoen. "Here, it is he who is alone. It is the perfect—"

_---_

—opportunity, the sharp, pointed man who was Cernd said; and finally, the second word that morning had been spoken; and there was no more escaping the fact that, as Sarevok had been lying elsewhere, unsuspecting, asleep, a-dream, however restful—they were both sitting here, naked in the bed, planning his murder.

She would bring Cernd to murder, her brother had foretold; and he had been correct; he had only been wrong about the time and the victim. She had, step by step, delivered the means, the motive and the opportunity for this murder: and in this time, this time of relieved tension after the story was over and the strangers had helped its hero, which was the time when it was the easiest to commit some foolishness for pure lack of attention—now, the murder would happen. And her brother would be its victim.

It had been a very slow, insidious murdering, she thought lazily; and, how much of this opportunity for it had come on purpose, and how much by chance, there really was no telling. One thing was certain, though: a god who had planned his resurrection before his death must have been a very patient man. Perhaps she had not found the deeper place, the place where she had found the power to heal Cernd, completely on her own.

What did Father have against Sarevok? she thought. What did Bhaal have against Sarevok that he—that instinctive, intuitive, barely sentient residue of him that her Father now was—was willing to let Cernd live, to forego all the potential deaths of Trademeet towards which he must naturally gravitate—for the sake of this one death? But the answer was ready and obvious, now that she had seen her brother in his restless dreams and in his murderous healing: they were, to put it simply, at odds. The father resented the son the—failure to comply, possibly: the failure to die at the set time, back in the Undercity of Baldur's Gate; or, possibly, his ambition—because if there were one person she could really see reaching for the Throne of Murder, it would certainly be Sarevok. And the son certainly resented the father—he had even told her this, and how he had put it then?—being played for a fool?

The two bastards were quarrelling; and she was, once again, caught in the middle of this family argument. In a way, they had never left that cave, Sarevok and she.

In a way, though, they had: this time, Cernd was here, trapped as she was; or, possibly, trapped more than she ever would be; and this, because of her own intemperate sympathy.

_Note to self, _she thought angrily, _until you really, really know what you are doing, stay out of other people's heads. And never, ever mix compassion with murder._

_As for you, Father… Perhaps I should not be so picky. But when I say, 'not like this,' I mean it!_

Father had underestimated her once; he will not underestimate her a third time; but—

She set out to searching for the thin, silvery moonlight thread.

_---_

The thread was much wider now, and much stronger; and she could not help wondering whether her father, now nothing else than an instinct, enjoyed or was simply forced to act through normal human instincts: ambition; the desire to protect one's offspring; to do justice; love… or, at times, mere affection.

Possibly, it was both: both necessity and willing inclination.

The thread was much wider now, and much stronger; and it would not let go; not the least, perhaps, because she was afraid of what would happen if it did. But, in the end, she was stronger, too, than she had been even in that cave; and, when she looked with her human eyes at Cernd, lying there, naked and untouched, and unaware of what she was thinking, in the bed; and when she looked at him with her other sight, and saw how pointed and sharp and angular he now was—

—the thread suddenly snapped, leaving behind only a trail of silver droplets scattered in the darkness, not unlike scattered beads; and she felt lonely again; so terribly, terribly lonely.

_---_

"I don't want you to kill him, Cernd," she said quietly. "Not you. It's all true what you are saying, but there are others, who have a better claim. Me, for one thing. And… I don't think I really like saying this, but, for what it's worth, I think that he liked you. Likes. As much as he can like anyone, and that's not saying much. And you say you liked him, and he really didn't do anything here… It's like… He's a bastard, but that doesn't mean that we should be, too. It's not about him. It's about you. Even if he would not think twice about killing you, I don't want you to be the one who kills him."

Cernd sighed deeply; and she could see how, with that deep sigh, he started to fall in with the background again, become again a part of all that he had chosen to be when he had left the city for the forest and the swamp. It was good, she thought. But it had been so completely, totally unfair to him what she had done to him before; and so easy. Far too easy than it should be possible.

"I do not know what came on me," he said, rubbing his eyes; and Imoen's heart clenched.

"I do," she said simply. "And I'm sorry for this. It's that… other kind of chaos, I'm afraid."

The man looked at her curiously, and not a little sadly; and, in the end, said only, "I… do not entirely understand. But," he smiled, and Imoen felt forgiven again, like that time when she had killed the swan; though, this time, there had been a reason— "you do, and this must be enough. Still…" His mouthed twitched bitterly. "It would not do not to see the shadow for the night. I will not kill a guest in my household, a companion at my table and a comrade in arms; but I cannot let a known murderer of a druid go unpunished."

Imoen smiled briefly; suddenly, she felt like snuggling next to the man again. "You're a druid chieftain," she said as she did so. "Aren't you people big on finding the middle ground?"

Cernd drew her close, and she felt much warmer again. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "The balance; hard to find, like the heart of shadow within the shadow."

_---_

He was to be banished, she thought miserably, picking on a blade of grass, sitting on the ground under a house at the edge of the village with Ashdale in her lap, watching the two men walking within the circle of the henge. He was to be banished: this was Cernd's solution; and fat lot of good would it do to anyone: for he was to be banished from these lands, where he had not harmed anyone, into those others, where he might do great evil with equal ease.

It was after breakfast now; it had been during breakfast that Cernd had asked her brother to walk with him, because there had been some small words he had wanted to exchange with him in private. Sarevok had looked lightly, amusedly, in Imoen's direction; and had agreed. And so, now they were walking on the scorched earth of the henge, the tall, dark-haired man in a cloak woven from grass and moss, leaning on a staff and summoning healing powers to the ground even as he spoke; and the taller, bald man with a cruel sword on his back and another at his side, listening closely to the first man's calm, quiet words with an impassive face.

He was to be banished; he was free to go, but he must never set foot in these lands again; if he ever returned, they would be enemies. Here, he had killed only in self-defence; but he had killed elsewhere, and Cernd wanted no druid's murderer among his kith and kin. It was all Cernd would do to the murderer; it was all he could do for the man he had liked, and a guest among his people, and someone whom, perhaps, he owed a bit. And so, without love or hatred, they would part; and they must never meet again.

And a certain part of Imoen's mind understood the simple reason of this sentence; even as a different part wanted her brother to defy the verdict, attack Cernd here and now, on the druids' lands, and die. For, if anything, this did hurt her: that Sarevok listened. Whatever passing fancy had once struck her brother to treat Cernd as a fellow, it was now enough to make him respect his rule.

In her short acquaintance of his, she had only seen him treat one man as he was now treating this quiet, unassuming druid chieftain; and that had been Aran Linvail, the Shadowmaster of Athkatla and his own lover.

_---_

Her life was, for now, secure. Cernd would be sending two druids with them; there were peace negotiations to conduct and amends to be made between the city and the forest. And then, there was also the matter of the rakshasa.

"Rakshasa?" Sarevok asked during the communal breakfast, casting an amused look at Cernd and Cernd's lap, where Ashdale was sitting. They had been introduced earlier that day; and Imoen, herself then amused, had been graced by the vision of a momentary light, perplexed scowl on her brother's face as he had, no doubt, been wondering just what he should do with that insect which would not offend his father; before he had quickly changed the topic of the conversation.

"Shapeshifting Calishite spirits," the druid Daria, who had returned that morning from Trademeet, explained; and Sarevok, Imoen and Cernd exchanged looks over the table. "The djinn followed them here. They have bought off all the food brought to Trademeet since that time, and refuse to leave until the humans bring them the rakshasa's heads. Trademeet is on the brink of starvation, because of the…" she looked at Cernd nervously and finished, "insects. We have asked the High Merchant if we might not encourage plant growth around the city again, hasten the maturation cycles to provide at least some food… He allowed our help. But the patches are not enough for a whole city, and have to be watched over by the city guard; and the farmers, though most are honest, have sold off the food."

"The djinn will have their heads today," Cernd then replied. "Pauden had them brought here yesterday, did he not?" he asked Imoen, who nodded in response; she had just started to feel miserable. She wanted out of the meal, as soon as possible. What was coming was right and necessary; but it should not be preceded by a shared breakfast.

"Perhaps, like the fallen log breeds moss and humus to breed new plants, so hasn't Adratha death come to be completely in vain," Cernd said quietly. "The heads of her killers will help amend Faldorn's crimes and bring back peace."

Imoen put her elbow on the table, put her head on the palm of her hand, and looked at the long-haired man with the dark-eyed boy in his lap. He would manage, she decided. In times of peace, he would manage. On his own.

It was then that Cernd asked Sarevok to go for a walk with him after breakfast, in private; and that Sarevok agreed.

_---_

Her life was, for now, secure, even if Cernd, in the end, had rejected his own idea to charm the horses to go wild if Sarevok threatened her. The horses had been treated well; they were not his, but another's property; and such incitement would, in the end, be no better than stealing them outright, as Dalok had done, he had said.

The two men were returning from the henge, heading directly for the place where she was sitting; and, suddenly, almost belatedly, she realised that if Sarevok wanted to harm Cernd, he need not attack the man himself; only his son. She started from the ground, putting herself between Sarevok and Ashdale, and her hand on the hilt of her sword; defying the man to do something. Anything.

Her brother only looked at her, with such an expression as she had not seen him aim at her in a long time: unbearable contempt. _Do you really think that, after I have gone to such bother to save that gnat's life, I would now kill him, sister?_ the golden glimmer was asking her, as clearly as if her brother had spoken aloud; and she felt angry. The flint struck the steel; and she replied, with a look, _It is only your own fault that, after you chose to refute your humanity, humanity wishes to have nothing to do with you, brother._

And, perhaps, her brother understood the reply; or, perhaps, he decided that the whole matter was not worth his time; because, suddenly, his face smoothed out and lost all expression. "I will prepare the horses, little sister," he said. "Make your farewells."

Imoen looked at Cernd, who had not moved during this whole silent confrontation, as if he had been completely convinced that, for whichever reason, Ashdale would come to no harm; who had only been standing there, between the siblings, like the tongue of a scales, holding the balance, as he ever had.

_---_

"It's this helm I've been telling you about," she said when she found it in her bags, and then found Cernd in his house; he had asked her to come there when she did. "Sarevok wore it, but just for a little while. Before that, it was Khalid's. And he was a good man."

"Things, like dogs, have a habit of not caring for the habits of their owners," Cernd said, shrugging lightly as he absently stroked the metal of the helmet. "It is enough that the owner cares for the thing… It may be part of why I prefer wolves over dogs," he smiled. "I thank you. But you will forgive me if—"

"—you will not make Ashdale grow into it?" Imoen finished, knowing enough of the man by now to have expected this question beforehand. "Sure. Then, give it to Celina's girl, or whoever wants it and you think will need it. But my godson gets first picks."

Cernd grinned widely. "I have something for you, too," he said. "I am sorry that your bow was broken. So, I thought that I might give you this… It bears no memories, and, if you sell it, you may have a better weapon to hunt with."

It was not the most private of gifts, this Dalok's flame blade; but that was perhaps a good thing, Imoen thought, taking the gift for what it was, a gesture of unassuming friendship; and she knew that Cernd must know that the sword would fetch her much more than the price of a bow; even a good bow, a fairly well-enchanted bow.

She took the blade and thanked the man; and then, together with him and with his son, left the house into the warm, clear late morning.

There, Sarevok was accepting a gift of his own from the druid Pauden, who was saying, "There is nothing like a solid druid's staff, my lad! Nothing like that toothpick you carry!" And Imoen thought that the druid Pauden must be very moved, indeed, if he admitted to the knowledge of a toothpick.

"Mistress Celina," her brother then said, charmingly, to the middle-aged woman who would be Cernd's ally in the village; if, that is, Cernd managed to rule her in. But what the woman replied, Imoen did not hear; because she was already beset by the druid Pauden, who was saying, "I thought I would give your brother something to remember me by, too, just to be fair, girl;" to which, Imoen smiled and said, "I'm sure he's grateful, grandfather," because that was just the right thing to say, and she did not know what she felt.

Then, there was only a quick peck on Celina's face, followed by the woman's admonition, "Take good care of yourself, girl. And watch over your brother," as Imoen saw, in the corner of her eye, Sarevok and Cernd nod to each other: they must have said their farewells in the henge. Then, another peck, on Ashdale's brow; and finally, the last kiss: an affable, affectionate kiss on Cernd's cheek, such as happen between friends, not lovers.

"Fare well, Cernd," she said, smiling warmly from atop the little rose grey mare.

"With nature's blessings," he replied, smiling peacefully, with his son in his arms.

And they were gone.

_---_

There was a long, dark silence as they travelled, all four of them, Sarevok and she riding in the enchanted travel cloaks of the Shadow Thieves, and the two druids in shapes of deer running before them, scouting and showing them the path through the swamp and the forest.

It soon turned out that passage through a swamp on horses carrying heavy travel bags would take quite longer than on horses so unburdened; at some points, the siblings even had to dismount the beasts and lead them by the reins to pass through the treacherous, miry ground. And so, the travel took much longer than they had thought it would; and, by the time they finally reached Trademeet—the druids had shifted back into their human shapes not long before—it was already near sunset; and the hour improved no one's moods.

Imoen had spent half the travel, watching her brother, and the other half, watching herself. He—was cool, and purposeful, and composed; and, on some level, she was convinced that he had already put away the memory of all that had happened in the forest into some tightly closed-off space in his mind, and would soon do all he could to forget it, because he had not left the druid village victorious; because, in the end, there had been nothing for him in Cernd's win, and so, he had gained nothing off its consequences. In his mind, he must be already in Trademeet, in what, no doubt, would be a luxurious house: shaven, bathed, in fresh clothes and a waft of frankincense; and back to Aran Linvail's and his own shady dealings.

And she—she had left a happy moment for an uncertain future. That was all.

_---_

Tents of cloth billowing on the air stood by the city gates: tents so many-shaped, and so fancy-coloured, crimson and burgundy and azure and sapphire and emerald and wine-purple and amethyst and cerise and silver and gold, that, after several days spent among muted greys, greens and browns, her eye was drawn to them of its own accord. The sounds coming from between the tents were also loud: loud sounds of an alien speech, loud sounds of guttural laughter, loud sounds of unfamiliar music on the cool evening air. And the smell—or smells, rather—they were hot and spicy and foreign and—

It was an assault on all the senses; it was as forceful a reminder that she had left one world and was entering another—or returning to another; she could not really decide which one was which—as could be; and she felt like a swimmer who had taken a deep dive in the cool water of a lake, and was now resurfacing, panting, and in dire need of a deep breath, and dazed by the sudden return of the feel of air and sun on the face.

Two figures awaited them near the tents, wordless and sombre-faced; and she knew that these would be the High Merchant Logan Coprith and the Guildmistress Busya, here to lift the ransom off their city and then buy what food the djinn would sell before they returned to Calimshan; summoned to this meeting by the druids' call.

The Guildmistress was over forty, brown-haired, businesslike and concise in her dark high-cut dress; she was not a handsome woman. Nor was the High Merchant a handsome man: some ten years older than his associate, with short-cropped, greying hair and many a scar on his face, he gave off the distinct impression of being more a military man than a merchant. And there was a whiff of something out of the ordinary in him, a thinly shimmering aura of command which Imoen's awakening divine senses could recognise, but which they could not yet interpret— Later, she learnt that Logan Coprith was as close to a paladin as a High Merchant could be.

They came out to meet the riders and their druid guides; and, for all their trouble, had to hastily step back as Sarevok reined in his golden horse the slightest bit too late, and almost rode into them.

"You—" the High Merchant said; and almost immediately fell silent as Sarevok lowered his hood.

The silence prolonged as both the High Merchant and the Guildmistress eyed the rider; as he, amused, eyed them in turn from the advantage of his horse's back; and as Imoen wondered what her brother wanted to achieve through this impolitic confrontation, and whether she should allow him to follow with it.

"I," the man on horseback said at length, sweetly virulent in that manner of his which connoted naught but utter contempt for his fellow human, "am Sarevok, Son of Bhaal and former Duke of Baldur's Gate. And I bring you the heads of the rukh Ihtafeer and her spawn."

He was, it was clear, pouring every last ounce of his cruel, arrogant self into this desperate display; and Imoen, even though no less than six or seven rejoinders occurred to her even as he spoke, chose, in the end, to respect this violent, brutal, hopeless pride; and said nothing.

He was sick of hiding, then; sick of hiding in the shadow of his powerful lover, in the cosy comfort of Athkatla's underworld, biding his time resolving little squabbles between errant guild-masters as he waited for Aran Linvail to ensnare Bodhi, Irenicus' sister. And he would not hide; not here. If Trademeet wanted to be saved, he was telling them, it would only be saved perfectly aware of who its saviour was. And its saviour, it would know, would savour every last bit of this awareness; he would not be the least bit gracious about it.

She saw him then… He, of all, was not much different to her other eyes, seen by that other sight: a brilliant, wild, blinding fire the kind of which burn in the hearts of stars, mad and all-consuming and kept in check only by a thin veneer of supercilious coolness, a crust of hoary cold, constantly melting and constantly rebuilt with the most meticulous care and patience; a deep, freezing cold which reminded her, somehow, only of—

_What did Irenicus do to you, brother?_ she wondered; or would wonder, but that in the human world, a dull thud caught her attention.

The bag in which they had wrapped the rakshasa's heads was lying at the feet of the two humans. It had opened, and one of the heads had spilled out of it.

"Have at them," Sarevok said curtly, tiredly. "I am sick of the smell."

And, painted gold by the golden light of sunset, he spurred his horse lightly and headed for the city gates.

But, of the two merchants, the Guildmistress, at least, proved herself to be a woman of high calibre. "There will be a celebration of sorts, tomorrow, once the djinn are gone and the markets are open," she said sharply after him.

Sarevok reined in his horse, turning it back to face the tableau of still life. "Imoen?"

The girl, startled by her own name, blinked and said, "Yes. I think we'll come."

"Then, the matter is solved," her brother said, suddenly amused again. "My little…" a slight hesitation as an advertent slip-up was realised, impossible to catch by someone who did not know the speaker well, and quickly averted by smooth recovery, "…companion will attend. I am leaving the city at dawn," he added offhandedly, almost as if throwing a bone, at Logan Coprith.

Imoen frowned, thinking, reluctantly, a mixture of angry, resentful thoughts.

_---_

The horses' hooves clattered on the ornate pavement stones, skilfully assembled into abstract, arabesque mosaics of celadon, turquoise and marble; Imoen's first sight of Trademeet was from the level of her mare's back.

It was beautiful, was her first thought; and the second, It must be rich. The houses, most painted a pleasant shade of lilac, with high, steep roofs tiled with little, elegant tiles, and with hanging balconies and windows with indigo-stained glass panes and side towers standing here and there, almost at random, so that they should, by all means, clutter the streets and the view—and yet, somehow, impossibly, did not. If a whole city could be easy on the eye, Trademeet was. It was clean; it was smart; it was, in short, a love at first sight. She could not wait to see its shops and markets.

The only drawback was the complete lack of plant life. It was Mirtul; the living lilac should be in bloom; it was not.

Their druid companions stopped ever so often by a bush or a tree or what should be a lawn, exchanging quiet comments on topics to her completely unknown, in such words that, for a moment, she thought that they were speaking a different tongue. She had tried to ask them what they thought of Faldorn, or Cernd, or her use of insects to wage her war, or his instruction for them to nurture the plants of Trademeet to hasten germination and budding, and what they thought was natural in it, and what was not, and where they thought the balance of it lay—but they would not speak to her.

In the end, she simply bade them farewell, left them by another patch of earth talking about restoring apical, or possibly, lateral, meristems, and hurried after her brother, who was looking at her impatiently.

Side by side, they crossed a large circular plaza with a fountain in the middle; then, entered one of the side streets; then, passed by two or three houses; to where the dwelling of the Lady Itona, the head of the Shadow Thieves' operations in Trademeet, stood.

_---_

The stable boy was tall and gangly, and had the cutest hazel eyes; and that was all Imoen managed to see of him as he leapt to help her get off the horse before Sarevok barked at him, "Out."

Then, as they both dismounted, her brother asked her, "A moment of your time, sister?"

Imoen tensed. "Yes, brother?"

But the man said only, "I saw that the druid gave you that elf's sword. Would you sell it to me?"

"Why?" the girl replied mechanically.

Sarevok shrugged lightly. "I will give you a good price. And it interests me. There is something odd about its grip… I should like to examine it."

Dryly irritated, the girl said, "Yes. I'll sell it. It's too heavy for me, anyway. And it's not exactly inconspicuous, either."

"Very well," her brother replied, reaching to his saddlebags, "What do I owe you, sister?"

_I don't know,_ his sister thought, in sudden, miserable honesty, looking at the broad back turned away from her, _What is the market price for killing a lot of people I know, and a lot of people I don't know, and planning a war? And what is the price for making me feel hurt when you are punished for it? What is the market price for listening when you should not listen, and being hurt when I don't want to see you hurt, and—_

"What can you give me?" she asked aloud.

"What do you want?" she heard.

"Gems," she replied absently. "Two thousand in gold, at least."

"So I thought," Sarevok agreed amiably; and shortly, the deal was settled. The blade and the gems changed hands; and then, Imoen asked, "Is that all, brother?"

Sarevok looked at her with his inhuman eyes, and shrugged lightly. "What do you want, sister? A goodbye kiss? And a farewell, with nature's blessings?"

And that one pointed question was, perhaps, enough.

_---_

He had been decent enough to order the stable boy to help her take her things to the inn she chose; and, since she knew nothing of Trademeet, she chose the best inn. After all, she could afford it.

Tomorrow, after she made sure her brother was really, completely gone, she would go shopping. She did not want to wear the armour of a Shadow Thief anymore. And she needed a new bow. And it was time to pick up learning magic again. She must really learn to cast the spell of stone skins. That one would come in use against any fighter. And if she were to start learning the really complex magic, she would have to stop wearing armour at all, and that was a pretty frightening thought.

She would go to Logan Coprith's little celebration, of sorts. She had earned it. She had killed one of those rakshasa, after all.

She would learn a bit about those Fentan Knights. Perhaps they were in the city. Perhaps she might join them.

She would ask someone to show her the way to the Windspear Hills. Even without a horse—but no, horses were a lot of bother, a lot of food and money and much too much bother, after all—even without a horse, the hills must be close. And she had a debt to repay there.

She would not dye her hair bright pink again, though: she would keep the colour as it was, bleached by the sun and the rain into rose. Rose… she would be rosy-haired, like dawn, she thought, and smiled.

All flowed; and tomorrow would be another day.

And—


	19. III: Horses' Move, 8

_This time, reviews are kindly Asked For. Begged for, even, even if it's just to say if the chapter is a fail or a pass... It was difficult to write. Extremely so._

---

**Siblings**

**Part III: Horses' Move**

**8**

A single candle burnt in the room, illuminating a desk, a small book opened on the desk and a young woman sitting behind the desk, biting the tip of a quill with an absent, distracted look on her face.

The scene was peaceful, but the woman's thoughts were not: like the flickering flame of the candle, they morphed, quivered and vibrated, much like the heated air over a desert does quiver and vibrate—and, in so doing, creates illusions so accurate that, in the end, it is impossible to distinguish what is real, and what is not.

It is easy to get lost in a desert. Especially when one travels it alone.

---

The question, first asked in an impassive, businesslike tone, _What do you want? _And then, in an amused, lightly mocking, familiar one, _What do you want, sister?_

The answer, at first nothing but a sensation, hiding timidly deep within the recesses of the limbic brain, _I want_—

And that, all. A want. A want—of what?

An apology? After all, it had all started from the guilt she did not want to feel.

She had been right to demand justice for Jaheira and Khalid's death. And, in the end, after all, she had prevented Cernd from killing Sarevok under the influence of her dead sire's power. Next to this, merely separating friends—or men who could be friends, anyway—

There was simply no use feeling guilty towards her brother; not only because there was nothing to do about it; but because she had saved his life, again. And the consequences of that went to her account. The consequences; what of the victims?

But the guilt was there: and it was not the sharp, uniform shame towards the future victims for saving their murderer's life. It was a discordant, divergent, two-way guilt— It made her angry. Because it meant that what she had thought when they had parted was true; that, through cooking and sewing and being so damned, stubbornly helpful and reasonable, her brother had, in the end, managed to get to her.

And then, Sarevok had delivered her to Trademeet, as he had said he would, and had let her go, as he had said he would, and was now leaving, and she was losing him from her sight, and everything was unresolved, abandoned, dangling, free to chase her for the rest of her life, to jump at her when she would least suspect it, perhaps to catch her off-guard, again.

The last time had been enough.

The distant, dissonant, pulsating, throbbing memory of a brother-murderer-brother; but it would not do to confuse memories. And people. And facts. They were confusing enough on their own.

As seconds, minutes, hours passed, as the candle started to splutter and still sleep would not come, as thoughts amassed and quivered and tensed and throbbed, and upset and upset, more and more, the balance and the peace of the woman's mind; as possibilities and scenarios were considered and weighed—the answer slowly, gradually; and then, when some unnamed threshold was crossed, suddenly and clearly, like an avalanche—emerged.

_I want to see you, brother. Now. And finish it._

---

_How do I kill you, brother? Tell me._

_Tell me._

Images, stilled in the amber of memory: Sarevok in the Undercity, in his heavy armour, covered in blood, laughing; Sarevok during their escape, dressed in makeshift plates, swapping creatures aside, frightening their enemies simply with his appearance. Sarevok fighting Renal Bloodscalp (_you've shielded yourself magically, pervert_). Sarevok, invisible, unseen, yet unidentified, dispelling Edwin's magic. Sarevok standing by her on top of a hummock, casting acid arrows. Sarevok charging blindly at Kyland Lind. Sarevok fighting trolls (_stone skins are useful, little sister_). Sarevok throwing himself at a rakshasa, pinning the shapeshifter to the floor. Sarevok pulling an elf off a horse and beheading him with a clean swipe of a Calishite scimitar.

_I know you, brother._

_I know you. You can do magic, but it's not your first choice, is it? When you have time… when you are at leisure, then it's magic for you. When the fight comes to you, it's always the sword. Too much time spent doing one thing, I guess… Old habits die hard. You'll go for the sword. Which sword?_

Images, offered by the mind's inner eye: Sarevok with the giant, cruel blade (_I have been considering calling it The Edge of Chaos, sister_). Sarevok with the flaming sword with the odd grip (_must protect self from fire_). Sarevok with the sharp Calishite scimitar—

_You're not really ambidextrous, are you, brother? You favour the right hand. Slightly, but you do. When you fight one-handed, it's always the right hand; when you hang a scabbard, it's at your left side. You are weaker on the left. Are you wearing your bracers now, at home, brother?_

Sarevok in Adratha's hut, pouring wine for her. Sarevok in the druid village, at breakfast, passing a jug of goat milk to her, laughing.

_Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if you aren't, will you remember to cast those stone skins? Most of the time, you forgot, even after the cave. There was just no need, everything was over too quickly. If you do, then, I guess, I'll just have to cast magic missiles, eh?_

_Can you see the invisible, brother? Tell me._

Awakening with a freshly healed arm (_I purged the invisibility and healed the arm and your brother carried you here_). Cernd, disappearing, in a henge, during a fight.

_You can't._

A ring of invisibility. A sword which hastened its wielder and, once drawn, made her unstoppable with magic. A dagger. Not a throwing dagger; but at close quarters, thrown with potion-enhanced strength, enough.

_A bit of poison on the tip of a dagger, nothing lethal… only a bit of a sleep-inducing potion, enough to dull the senses and slow down reflexes, to relax muscles and slacken control… Anishai?_

"In times of necessity, it is possible to fashion simple, relatively weak poisons from ubiquitous materials, such as certain—"

"—spell components. (Though only a simian would waste spell components in this manner.) For instance—"

_Thank you, brother. Now, my other-brother… I won't stun you. No. I'm not as… provident as Father is. But you will understand that I won't fight you on your terms, either._

_Yes. I think you will._

---

Barely past the first hour after midnight of that clear, cloudless night, a hooded, cloaked figure crossed the streets of Trademeet from Vyatri's Pub in the direction of the city's largest plaza; and then disappeared in the maze of streets on the north-east side.

Of the two passers-by who saw it, the first one, a human, knew better than to occupy herself with odd figures who walked the town by night; the other, a halfling, decided simply that the figure must be a fellow Shadow Thief, due forthwith for a private meeting with the Lady Itona, publicly a rich widow, and the guild-mistress of Trademeet in her other character. Which was why he might be quite surprised if he followed the figure to its destination; but he did not, and thus we shall concern ourselves with him no further.

There was a pair of guards standing in front of the Lady Itona's great, elegant house; for a moment, the figure considered bluffing its way into the residence—but, in the end, decided against it. The house was not where actual guild business in Trademeet was carried as a matter of course; any caller to the house's mistress might require a password. And it was possible, however unlikely, that the guards were intelligent men; the route would be tried if it must, but, for the enterprising thief, there existed, perhaps, alternate paths.

The figure made its way to the back of the house, where its suspicions were soon confirmed: the residence had a garden, quite large, with a patch of trees to the left, and a lawn, a bench, a pond and a gazebo to the right; as elegant as the house, though now, rather desolate for lack of leaves on plants.

The figure passed casually by the house, passed by several other buildings, entered a side lane and, when it made sure it had not been followed, or, indeed, noticed, cast a spell of invisibility on itself; and then, returned to its target. The garden was unguarded, it had noticed through the ornate wrought iron of the fence; that meant that the garden was trapped. The Lady Itona might be confident that those in the know would know to avoid her house; and she might wish to appear nothing but a foolish, incautious dowager to those not in the know; and actual guild business might be conducted elsewhere; but the garden was trapped.

Trapped it was.

Ever so often, faintly glowing silver sigils of active warding glyphs showed up on the ground, forcing the invisible thief to circumvent them in a wide arc; them, and the pressure plates—for the owner of the house, it was evident, did not put her complete trust in magic, even if magic was easier to do away with before a soirée. In this one thing, the thief was lucky: the insects which had eaten the grass had uncovered the glyphs, and made her job much easier than it might otherwise be. Nimbly and skilfully, she moved cautiously across the lawn in the direction of the house, plotting her route in her mind: when she escaped, she would not have the time to choose a path at leisure.

A small smirk appeared on the thief's face as she closed in on the silent building, heading for the massive wooden door which must lead to the living room. This was _thievery_. It made her blood tingle and—

A small zephyr wafted then; and the thief suddenly halted in her tracks. Something odd was there, between the door and the leafless, branchy tree closest to the house; something—perhaps an errant twig which had not moved on the wind exactly as it should; there was no telling. Only a vague sense of danger remained from the moment when the wind had blown; but the thief, taking care to check that there was no one out back on the street, and seeing that there were no lights reaching her from the house's windows—decided to take the risk and follow up on her hunch.

First, a half-crouch, in as covered a place as one might find in the leafless garden; then, some quick hand movements—the next spell would be vocalised; finally, the small cantrip which had once already saved the thief's life: a cloud of golden dust, blown off from the hand to settle on—

_I guess, _Imoen thought, eyeing the complex trap into which she had almost stepped, _I was right when I thought it couldn't be that easy._

---

The glitterdust settled also on her; and, for a short moment, she was perfectly visible, a clear target in the moonlight. She paused, unmoving; but no one appeared to have taken notice of her. Trademeet was a peaceful city; and this, a peaceful neighbourhood.

The glitterdust faded; and with it, Imoen, too, faded into shadow. Now nothing but a spot of dark grey in the grey night, she carefully made her way around the illusion hiding the trap. The door was unavailable as a means of entry; she would have to enter the house through a window.

She made her way along the wall of the house, hiding in the shadows of the overhanging balconies and checking the windows for traps and for possibilities of entry. The first window would not budge.

The second did.

She checked her weapons one last time: the sword, and the poison-coated dagger; then, checked the ring on her finger, and the spell components, and the spells she remembered, and her plan; drank a potion of fire resistance and a potion of strength; made sure that she was ready, and slid through the open window into the dark room inside.

She was in.

---

By the time she realised that the room, whilst dark, was not empty, it was already too late.

_Ilmater, _she first thought, wide-eyed, _this is worse than when I found Hull and Phlydia— _And then, suddenly, sullenly, cynically, _Well, if he hasn't killed me yet, he'll sure kill me now._

Behind her, the window, untended, closed with a crash.

---

Time, pregnant and intimately embarrassed, flowed slowly like treacle.

The sword was in her brother's hand quicker than she had expected; the other hand, meanwhile, flung off the boy who was watching her with an expression of pure, unadulterated fear in his cute, hazel eyes; he rolled off the bed to the floor with a small cry. Neither sibling paid him much attention.

A moment of mutual non-aggression passed slowly as the sister forcibly prevented herself from reaching for any of her many weapons; at the end of which, the brother sighed, nodded, stood up unhurriedly, and picked up the teen from the floor by the scruff of his neck. The stable boy was, by this time, recovered from his shock and protesting lightly, "It's her!"

The cry was promptly silenced by a deep kiss planted on the sweet mouth; and, as the young man was cavalierly set outside the chamber's door, a firm, "It was fine. Now go. Leave. Forget what you saw."

"I wish I could," Imoen said with feeling, leaning against the nearest wall as her brother slowly closed the door after his company; as he stood by it for a moment, listening; and then, as, sword still in hand, he crossed the room to a cabinet and, picking up a jug standing on top of it, started to drink from it, in large, heavy, throaty gulps. He finished; he poured out the rest of the contents on his head; it was wine, and it settled in a multitude of small, blood-red droplets on the naked skin of his neck and shoulders, around the thin golden necklace which was the only thing he wore.

"Well, sister?" thus calmed, he asked quietly, without looking at her; quietly, and not sounding in the slightest amused. "What can your brother do for you?"

"You have mistaken your mark, I believe," he added when no answer was forthcoming. "The effects are in the cellar."

Imoen frowned. "You think I'm here to steal something."

"Not on family business, certainly."

You're a better assassin than that, she heard in the curt assertion; and so, asked, "Listen… Don't you want to put something on?"

For a very precious moment, the offer was considered. Then, "No."

"No?" Imoen repeated.

"No," Sarevok replied; then, gesturing with the hand with the jug at the bed, said simply, "My bed. My bedchamber," he added, with another pointed gesture. "My life. It is you who are the guest in it. A much unwanted guest, little sister," he finished dryly.

"Well, yes, but—"

"—_Damn_!" The jug smashed into the wall across the room, leaving behind a dark stain of wine and a shatter of porcelain. "What do you want, sister?!" the man abruptly yelled out, looking at her at last, "Why have you come here? To make me—what? Apologise? For murder? Beg for your pardon before you kill me? I," he finished imperiously, "do not apologise. And I," he added, stressing every word, "Do not. Ever. Beg."

_I was right!_

The relief was immense; so, in the end, she had found the truth and not the illusion— But already, the sharp, burning executioner's gaze swept over her, head-to-toe, toe-to-head; she felt naked herself; and Sarevok, slowly, with such sudden, cruel accuracy that, for all the relief, it took all of Imoen's strength to prevent herself from reaching for her weapons, said, "No. I see. It is you who have come here to seek my pardon, sister." He laughed. "You have separated a man and his friend, and you are suffering pangs of conscience on account—of: not my future victims. Me. And," another delighted laugh, "it worries you, in the depths of your little heart. You want to be rid of them. You want to hate me with the fullness of your fury again— Well," he shook his head. "Have what you want. I have no need for it. Just, please, when we meet again… Do not say a word."

Imoen sighed deeply and tore off the wall; and, after a moment's search on the floor amidst the tangled mass of male clothing, and the eventual discovery of what she was looking for, approached the naked man; who, by this time, had frozen into a statue of himself, drawn in light, darkness and blood-red wine. He must have realised, then, that, until this point, she had, indeed, not said a word—

She touched his arm, lightly, once, and said, "Pants. Bed. Please?"

When that brought no response, she added, cautiously, "Little brother?"

---

They were sitting on the bed in the darkness; he, now clothed, hunched, with his head bowed low, his hands on his thighs and the tip of the Chaos Edge tracing lazily some sigil on the floor; she, cross-legged, looking away and slightly turned away, with her left shoulder to Sarevok's right, both her blades in her lap, and her right hand free to draw them.

There was no telling which one would be quicker to the kill. All it would take—

"Why?" she asked, breaking the silence at last.

The shrug was barely palpable. "It was weak."

"Weak," Imoen repeated blankly.

"It was futile, sister," a pause, "to have attempted to negotiate a ceasefire with an enemy loath to consent to it. The dead," another pause, "claim their rights, and you would have inevitably ultimately treated the offer of," yet another pause, "a permanent truce as an attempt to subvert your loyalties. As, in the end, you so amply demonstrated. It was plainly preferable for both sides to cut down losses at the earliest possible convenience."

The sarcasm came on its own. "The earliest possible convenience? Just when did you realise, brother, that I would not betray my friends?"

A small laugh. "In the henge. Cernd was harmed then, and that took precedence, but—"

"You lie."

"I do?" The voice seemed more curious than angry.

"I remember… 'A history and a future such as cannot be amended.' That was in the cave, wasn't it?"

There was a moment of silence; followed by a deep sigh. "I think that I was… confused, sister."

"Confused. You were… confused."

"Yes. It is the correct sentiment, of course. But you had just saved my life at that point; and, both before and since then, there were moments when you did not appear overtly hostile. I thought that there was some scope for mutual agreement, and that, given sufficient proof of my goodwill, the agreement may be reached. Eventually, however, I realised that you were, at most, as—"

"—confused?"

"Yes."

Another small silence.

"But, as you well know, brother, that wasn't what I was asking you. Not: why you decided to end our—"

"—familiarity?"

Yet another silence, this time much longer and filled with two minds attempting to assimilate a concept fundamentally alien to them both.

"Yes, that," Imoen said in the end. "Why did you decide to attempt it at all?"

A laugh. "I can't tell you that, sister."

---

Suddenly annoyed to the extreme, she uncrossed her legs, got off the bed and stepped right into the path of the sword. "You know, little brother," she said, folding her arms as the blade stopped when it encountered her in its path and Sarevok, barely raising his head, looked her straight into the face, "for once—for _once_—you might have refrained from laughing and have replied to the question, instead. Because. Well. My brother comes—_has_ come, actually—to some deep, life-changing, groundbreaking, earth-shattering resolution—and has decided to act like a normal human being around me. And then, he not only fails most miserably at it, but he won't even tell me why. That's just fine. Great. Peachy, even. Why am I bothering with you, again?" she added, wringing her hands, acutely aware how histrionic she must look.

A perplexed frown answered her, followed by a deeply irritated, "Whatever came to your mind that I was laughing at you, sister? I was laughing simply because that was the exact truth: I can't tell you. I don't know. Even if you won't believe it."

The blade rose from its rest, bypassed her neatly and followed its owner as he stood up and crossed the room: five feet of steel, exactly as long as she was tall: the sharp edge, the simple hilt and the intricate guard and pommel which had taken her friends' lives. "How do you remember the first days of independence, sister?" she heard in the background as she watched it, suddenly fascinated.

"How did you welcome the terrible pressure of freedom?" she heard then, and transferred her look back to the blade's holder.

But he did not expect her to reply; instead, he laid the blade by his side, and leaned against the wall, folding his arms; and spoke on, "Life in a cage is as simple as life within an inch of attaining a lifelong goal, is it not, sister? The choices are obvious: there is no choice. The prisoner has no choice, and no power, save the power to plot an escape. The escape comes to pass; yet even then, the choices are limited. Kill this. Go that way. Bargain for information. Bargain for cooperation. Do all you can to win freedom—"

"And then, freedom is won," she heard as she leaned against the small cupboard which stood on this side of the bed, "And the prisoner, who, until that point, had to interact with one, two, ten people at most, is suddenly thrown back into the vast, treacherous sea of human relations; and, goalless, directionless, must find his way in it. Even you— When Aran let you go, you did not immediately make plans for your future. You could have potentially left Athkatla that very same day, sister. You could have returned north; the money would have lasted at least part of the way."

There was no malice in the simple observation; still, when Imoen concentrated her tired mind, she frowned. "Yes," she admitted. "Somehow, it simply… did not come into play. I had to regain my bearings. Find a goal. Just… start living again. But you, brother—you knew what you wanted, even then," she said, trying to return the courtesy and sound possibly non-confrontational in turn, "And you had a place to live."

A brief laugh. "I remember the argument we had about it. And I will reply to you the same way as I replied then, sister: unlike you, I cannot walk the streets of Athkatla freely. From the pinnacle of the society, from the expectation of immediate ascension—" A missed beat, "From all that, I fell back into the underworld. For a moment," he added pensively as Imoen, surprised, looked up, "I even thought that Beshaba had smiled upon me widely, that my destiny had really run a full circle— No matter. I was free to act, within limits; free to make a name for myself, among those who knew my name already, yet were strangers to me; secure, within a cage. And my plans had suffered a drastic setback—"

The anger had not gone far away enough not to return when she needed it. "It pains me to hear it, brother."

Sarevok looked at her, and, with a cool smile, replied, "I knew that you would understand, sister. After all, unlike me, it was not the first time you lost control of your life and must redo it from scratch, was it not? You are, one might say, experienced in that regard. This ought to have made you doubly sympathetic to my predicament."

"It did not," Imoen replied, folding her arms. "I see no reason why it should. I see no reason why I should pity you for not having managed to start a war, brother. And stop confusing Irene and me," she added, suddenly irritated. "I followed her because I wanted to. It was not my life you upset. So, stop that."

Her brother was watching her oddly; at last, he shrugged lightly. "Aran wanted you, in every possible meaning of the word and whatever your opinion," he said in a calm, conversational voice, as if merely picking up a lost thread of the conversation. "And he, as you may know, has a genius of his own: an eye for the exceptional. For the unique. He finds it, he chases it and he makes it his own. An insignificant idiosyncrasy, of some help in his trade, I believe: he rarely misses a bargain, and equally rarely a talent. And, forgive me, sister, but, back then, you did not look especially physically appealing."

"Neither did you, brother," Imoen retorted perfunctorily as she digested the parts of her brother's speech he was so careful to avoid.

"I have no idea," he spoke on, meanwhile, "whether I wanted to keep you away from him, then, or him away from you; both, probably… But then, you were gone, and I stayed. I, too, had things to do: recover my strength. Secure my rank among Aran's people. Familiarise myself with the chain of command, with the guilds—"

"He trusts you," Imoen noted.

A half-smile crossed Sarevok's face. "He is a fool. But I met Mae'Var, and he mentioned you; I met Valen—Bodhi's envoy—and she mentioned you; I met Anishai, and asked her about you. It appears, sister," he added, suddenly amused, "that you were making quite the name for yourself when your career among your fellows was so unfortunately interrupted."

Imoen groaned silently; some of her feeling must have shown on her face, because Sarevok, still amused, added, "Well, you would not expect me not to take interest in a sibling, a fellow survivor, a rising star of the criminal firmament and one of the very few people I knew in Amn, would you? And, of course," he added, much more quietly, "the later events proved that you did not put me out of your mind, either. Even if your interest was less… detached."

"Less detached," Imoen repeated flatly; and then again, "Less _detached_. I was scared to death that you would come and kill me, brother."

There was a silence; at the end of which, the man shrugged lightly again, and said, "Yet, in the end, you came to me. In the company of a sibling, no less, and yelling at the top of your voice about an attack. I am not easily fazed, sister; but I cannot say that the manner of your reappearance in my life did not surprise me. Especially given what was yet to happen."

Suddenly, the amusement returned to his voice. "I pride myself on not being inflexible, either, sister; but that day was full of surprises. I saw you kill. I saw you—murder. I knew that the next few nights would not be kind to you. I had known that Bodhi would hunt you; and—" A brief hesitation, followed by a shrug. "That was all; except that, ever since that time, matters grew, step by step, even more… complicated. Until, that is," he added, much quicker now as his tale was, apparently, coming to an end, "you told me to stop stalking you; and I finally realised— It was pathetic. I should have realised that sooner, and on my own. However, the deed was done, and all that remained was to amend the fault."

There was a deep sigh, and Sarevok picked up the sword from the floor. "As you see, sister," he said lightly, "I cannot answer your question. Whatever gold and diamonds you have come here for, little thief, you must satisfy yourself with zircons and fool's gold. As much as it pains me to say so, I have never decided to attempt anything. Not as such. I was merely… confused. Caught in the events."

He shrugged, and, deeply scowling, added, "Though, now that we speak of the matter… Unless we are the two last of the kinfolk alive, or unless you strike against me first, or unless I lose my mind again—consider yourself free not to be deathly scared of me. And now. Is there anything else you want, or will you go now? I would like to take some sleep before I leave."

"You don't sleep well," Imoen said, not moving from the cupboard.

"No. I don't," her brother replied curtly.

It was as if some undefined veil, parted for a moment, had closed again; and so, she asked only, "What will you do now, brother?"

Sarevok shrugged. "Return to Athkatla. Learn what Aran has managed to do about Bodhi and Irenicus."

"Tell Aran from me that I don't want to be a Shadow Thief anymore, will you? I have no idea how to put in my resignation properly."

An odd glimmer appeared then in the man's eyes; but it disappeared quickly, and he said only, "I see. I will. What do you plan to do instead, sister?"

Imoen frowned. "Stay here, I think. There is an adventuring party I might want to join if they are in town— Are you really sure you can't stay, too? You aren't expected back in Athkatla for several days more, I think."

On some level, it was deeply satisfying to hear the silence which greeted the question.

---

Without taking his eyes off her, her brother reversed the grip on the sword, thrust it into the floor, folded his arms again, and said simply, "No. I will not kill you if I can, sister. But I will not die for your vengeance. And I will not die to please the masses."

"And you will not apologise for murder," Imoen finished, sighed, and added, "You know, brother, I don't think it's really possible to apologise for murder. You may try to atone for it, but apologise? No."

She saw his face then, and took pity on him. "Do you know that if I wanted you to die—really, really wanted to—you would have been dead twice over already? Three times, maybe," she added, remembering the night's preparations: she really had been ready to kill if her suspicions would not prove true. "Didn't Cernd tell you—?"

"Cernd did not tell me anything. Only that—"

"I really am sorry, you know," Imoen interrupted abruptly; after which, she sighed again. "I am a thief, not a paladin, remember? And it's not as if I was asking you to surrender. I only want to spend a couple of days with a brother who doesn't want to kill me, in a city we have apparently saved together—even if he absolutely had to make sure to introduce himself to its High Merchant in the absolutely worst possible way—" She shrugged. "I don't think I'm a pink and black fury anymore, you know? More like… rose and grey."

For a brief moment more, the siblings only watched each other, tiredly; until, at last, the brother let his gaze drop to the floor and, lazily, languidly, he let it sweep over his sister once more; after which, he said, amusedly, "Rose and grey, you say, sister? It agrees with you, I daresay. Have you considered wearing pale green with it? Something in the vein of celadon, possibly?"

Imoen blinked; but, recognising an attack from the flank when she saw it, she halted, feinted and parried; and hence, replied, "Have you ever considered wearing old gold instead of honey gold, brother? It would fit your eyes better, I think."

There was a small laugh. "Touché, sister. I forfeit. Will you be returning to the inn? Or do you prefer to stay here?"

Imoen looked around the room. The stain of dark wine had dried long before, but the porcelain shards still littered the floor. And the bed— "Here?"

"In the guest bedchamber, sister," she heard the amused voice reply. "If so, I will have to send someone to guard your property."

"There's no need to. I put a trap on the door when I was leaving."

"Ah. In that case, excuse me—"

---

She did not see him anymore that night; instead, a firm-faced, middle-aged woman who introduced herself as "Mrs Stoker, steward of the house," came to pick her up and, having shown her the house's baths on the way, led her to another bedchamber. If the woman were in any way annoyed by being woken up in the middle of a night, an unexpected guest to wait on, a large wine stain on a wall and other such minor affairs, she let none of it show; but she was clearly, utterly and quite visibly scandalised by the guest's firm refusal to the offer of a personal maid to be sought and found on the day to come.

The guest, on her part, waited until the door closed behind the steward; waited some time more; and, when she was completely sure that the steward was gone, burst out laughing. Then, she found a steaming brew standing by the bed, with a small, curt tag: "Not poison."

It took some contemplation to drink it.

But it was not poison.

---

She had never sought out this land before; but this time, she felt, she must. And, since the land was her, and since she felt she must, the land was found.

Irene was sitting on the ramparts of the citadel of Candlekeep, dangling her legs from the wall. She looked alive. "Hello, Imoen," she said, and smiled.

"Hello, Irene," Imoen replied, sitting next to her sister.

"I see that our brother and you have come to an agreement," Irene said, without special rancour.

"Does it bother you?" Imoen asked.

"No. Not really," Irene replied. "It won't last long."

"Oh," Imoen said; and then, added, "What do you think of him? Really? It's important."

A shadow crossed the dwarven face; a moment passed; finally, Irene said, carefully, "Would you ask to be shown the way by a man who moves blindly because he cannot see the light for the one he casts himself?"

Imoen slowly mouthed the words, and smiled. "I can ask him to light my way while I lead him… Thank you, sister."

"There was a question I wanted to ask you last time, you know," she added, pulling her legs under her chin. "You said that I was turning to be Father's puppet in life. And the first times we met, when you looked different, you did look a bit like a puppet. So… You are a puppet, aren't you? You are saying just the things Father wants me to think, aren't you?"

The dwarf beamed. "Now, that's a very interesting question, isn't it? But I can't answer you that, I'm afraid. After all, I'm a liar."

"And that's a paradox if I ever saw one," Imoen laughed. "So, you really are still there!"

The dwarf appeared to be lightly startled. "I was here all the time."

Unmindful of the interruption, Imoen spoke on, "A memory and a shadow, and, unless you say things which make no sense, or things I already know, you must say only Father's truths… It must be awful for you. Listen… Why don't you be quiet, and I talk, this time? A lot happened recently, and I want to tell you all—"

---

She awoke when the sun was high on the sky, and the warm sunrays were tickling her nose; and, for a moment, until she remembered what had happened at night, she felt completely, utterly lost.

Then, as she remembered what had happened, she got off the bed with a start.

Sarevok was in the living room of the house, smooth and urbane, and surrounded by a cloud of smell of the brew she had drunk the previous night; though that civilised image was completely spoilt by one small detail: for he still had the druids' deerskin clothes on him. He was sitting by a long table, reading something his sister shortly recognised as his journals from his life in Baldur's Gate, with a deep scowl of disgust on his face. As she entered, he rubbed his forehead and yawned; and then, as he saw her, said noncommittally, "Imoen. How was your night?"

"Fine," the thusly named replied, and added, "What's that brew, brother? The not-poison?"

She found herself the object of most punctilious study as she heard, "Chocolate? It's Maztican. I thought you might enjoy it. Did you?"

"Yes," she replied, stealing surreptitiously the jug containing it, and discovering that a paper-thin porcelain cup had appeared in front of her out of nowhere, "I did. It's Maztican?" She frowned. "It must be expensive."

"A bean is worth roughly ten times its weight in gold," she heard, and sputtered; and, in pure self-defence, said, "I don't want a maid, brother. I've never had a maid, and I don't want a maid."

Her brother frowned and shrugged. "I wasn't offering you one, sister. Was Elaine?"

"Elaine?"

"The steward. Mrs Stoker? I asked her to prepare everything for you."

Imoen leaned back in her chair and, sipping chocolate, said, pensively, "This will be _weird_."

Sarevok laughed. "No, it won't. But if you changed your mind—"

"No. I didn't. We must fetch my things from the inn."

"The mistress of the house will want to meet you. She seemed deeply impressed by your nocturnal achievement… Yesterday, she boasted to me that her security is unbreakable."

"There is a party in the evening. If you're to go with me, we must first speak with—what was his name? The High Merchant?"

"Logan Coprith. I already have. He said that, as long as I keep away from any Lurraxols and Alibakkars, and don't go out publicly, I can stay in the city. This includes, obviously, any social gathering."

"But not shopping?"

A laugh. "No. Not shopping."

"Will you go with me? You will carry the stuff. I must buy a bow, arrows, scrolls—"

"—_clothes_, sister."

A snort. "Yes, brother. That, too."

---

It was not a perfect day.

It was a day full of awkward silences, the likes of which all too often happen when two people try to avoid a lot of topics; after all, most topics these particular two people ever had in common divided them rather than united them.

It was a day which did not forget that there was a reckoning yet unfinished; that one of these people still had much of a history to answer for, and that they both had a destiny yet to face; that the dead claim their rights, and that it is only just and right that they do so.

It was a day which did not pass without a death; because death follows the Children of Murder even when they are happy. But this time, the kill did not go unaccompanied by a restoration; and when the Children of Murder examined the piece of sparkling, metallic string with which Sarevok had garrotted the one who had called himself Darsidian Moor while Imoen had finally destroyed Rejiek the Hidesman, a murderer whose house she had once visited—they unanimously decided that it must be nothing else but the string of the Gesen Bow, the last work and the masterpiece of the greatest bowmaker ever, Gesen Khan; once in possession of the Shadow Thieves, and then stolen, until it resurfaced in, of all places, a tanner's shop.

It was not a perfect day; but it was, all in all, a good day.

And so, as they both walk the streets of Trademeet in Mirtul, where, because of the efforts of a pair of druids, lilac slowly begins to bloom: this very large, golden-eyed young man and this very short, rosy-haired young woman: for a brief moment, nothing but a pair of siblings—let us leave them, for this moment, as they are, alone.

**End of Part III: Horses' Move.**


	20. IV: Knights' Attack, 1

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**1**

_Messe agus Pangur Bán,_

_cechtar nathar fria shaindán:_

_bíth a menmasam fri seilgg,_

_mu menma céin im shaincheirdd._

_---_

_I and Pangur Bán, my cat_

_'Tis a like task we are at;_

_Hunting mice is his delight_

_Hunting words I sit all night._

—_written by an anonymous monk; translated by Robin Flower_

_---_

_Bracers._

She was reluctant to pack away Adratha's bracers. They were a gift: they should be used as they were intended. But they were also old, and did not fit her very well, and the enchantment on them, the glover had said, was failing. And she had sold her armour.

_Boots._

She had sold her armour, to the local guild: she still had enough loyalty to do that. It fetched her just enough to pay for the finest pair of thieves' boots: silent, stealthy and cosy.

_Belt._

When she asked where the boots had been made, the fences sent both of them, Sarevok and her, to the glover who would sell her the enchanted bracers. He threw in the girdle for free, just for smiling at him and brightening his day, he said.

Sarevok bought a belt for himself there.

_Bow._

The woman showed her a bow with a thin, frayed string, and said that it shot out invisible arrows, and that it had been given by some lich to some guardian of his to protect him. Curiously enough, when Imoen asked for a test shot of the 'invisible arrow,' the woman grew rather flustered and almost tore out the bow from her client's hands.

And when Sarevok peeked out from under his hood and, quite amused, inquired the shopkeeper how come such a powerful bow could have been at all taken from the aforesaid guardian, Imoen received a discount.

_Cloak._

Having bought the boots, and the bracers, and the bow, and the arrows, and the scrolls, and the clothes—for, as it had turned out, for one rich enough, putting enchantments on normal clothes proved no trouble at all—she was almost broke; and, although the shopkeeper who had the azure cloak did allow her to put it on, and although it fit her perfectly, and Sarevok confirmed that the cloak's enchantment was twisting her image as declared, the price was simply too high. She must wear the old one. At least it had been cleaned.

She looked into the mirror once again; adjusted the belt slightly; adjusted the cloak; smiled at her own reflection, picked up the bow and the quiver, and left the room and the residence.

Sarevok was already outside, holding Deneb's and Grasshopper's reins; reclined against the wall of the house, with his arms folded, his head crooked, and his eyes half-closed, he had the most studiously lazy air about him. She had made sure that he would not hear the front door open, or close; and she was making sure that he would not hear her as she was going down the stairs; nevertheless, halfway down, she heard his amused voice, "At last. I was thinking I would have to go there and remove you by force, sister."

"Thus spake the man who spent three hours picking the pattern for a tattoo," she replied amiably. "How do I look?"

"Lethal, of course," she heard, and sighed: certain people were incurably single-minded.

"In that case, let's go, brother."

_---_

There had been two days of Trademeet: two days and two nights, filled with shopping, sightseeing, partying, and, in general, lazing about, with and without company. The company would be leaving town on the morrow: today, then, was the day the siblings would hie to the Windspear Hills to settle an old debt and, perchance, learn something of the wizard who called himself Irenicus; and to practice magic.

The idea was simple: they had both, he and she, started to study the arcane, back in Athkatla, for their private reasons; but they both, he and she, had deeply ingrained fighting habits proper to their respective trades. If these habits were to change, practice was required. Thus, practice would happen.

The Windspear Hills were, as they had learnt in the pubs and taverns of Trademeet, the ideal type of land for such noble entertainment: rough and uninhabited, perfect for two wizard initiates with much determination to learn, but little formal training.

The healing potions had cost a small fortune.

"I have been thinking, sister," Sarevok vouched.

However long it had taken, they had, in the end, managed to kill the imprudent ankheg without once touching any of their swords, Imoen's new bow or the druid staff Sarevok had brought with him and had been eyeing curiously the whole day; exhilarated and proud of themselves, they had decided to return to the horses, eat something and simply rest for a while. The day was extremely warm, and invited such laziness; and they were both, they had discovered, still hungry and thirsty for the sun, even if, as the tan started to come up, the fine meshes of scars Irenicus had given them also became much more visible.

"What have you been thinking, brother?" Imoen asked, yawning and correcting the leaf she used to protect the skin of her nose. The little clouds were nice, she decided. And the water of the small lake was making a pleasant noise. It was a pity that there weren't more plants around, though; the Hills were almost all sandstone and water. Although there must be a forest somewhere here, if there were dryads—

"When I leave, you will be alone," Sarevok said, and thus captured Imoen's attention. She propped herself on her elbows, looked at him, and hazarded, warily, "Yes?"

The Fentan Knights, as it had turned out, were not in Trademeet. They had left for the north several months ago—which must have been right after they had helped Cernd; apparently with the purpose of clearing out that old dwarven ruin near Gullykin, Durlag's Tower. How much time could clearing out one ruin take? Perhaps there had been complications.

"Deneb is yours, if you want her, of course," the man, undaunted by his interlocutor's evident lack of enthusiasm for the conversation, continued, and Imoen's gaze went to the small patch of grass where their horses were grazing. (_You've called your horse… Grasshopper, brother? No, sister. The horse told the druid who took care of him that he was called Grasshopper. I merely had no incentive to try and convince him otherwise.) _Did she want Deneb? Horses were an awful lot to take care of—

"Mical agreed to continue to take care of her," Sarevok said, as if reading her mind; and Imoen found herself squirming slightly. Mical was the hazel-eyed one, and she had been extremely glad to have found out that Sarevok had dealt with him himself on that very first night she had spent in the Lady Itona's house. Whatever that entailed, she did not want to know: but the boy still lived, and her apology, when she had tried to apologise, had been heard, with that slightly hostile air which had said that, plain as plains, an apology from a house-guest to a house-servant was impossible, and which, for a moment, had made her feel plainly rotten.

"You would have to find a different stable, though, I believe," she heard, and sighed. The conversation with the Lady Itona ranked as the third most unpleasant moment of the past days. The Trademeet guild-mistress, on the surface polite as honey, concealed in her words poisoned daggers. She was clearly bent on resenting Imoen the embarrassment the younger woman had caused her by breaking into her house; and living in the house when her place was so clearly among the servants. Funny how that went—

"However. As I said, sister… I have been thinking, and I believe that I have found the solution to the problem."

What problem? she thought, suddenly drawn back to the outside reality. Oh. That I'm to be alone. Crap, after yesterday tantrum, he must think—

"Consider it a parting gift."

She blinked. They had agreed that there would be no gifts—or, better said, understood that there would be no gifts. Gifts were insidious. They were personal. They made one think of the giver. The way Adratha's bracers made her think of Pauden and the druids.

She unrolled the piece of parchment, half-suspecting what she would find there; beside her, Sarevok was explaining calmly, "Since a familiar is bound to its summoner, it could not betray you, sister, unless with its very presence. It could guard you in your sleep and protect you until you found a company befitting you. And, since the familiar which answers to the summoner's call responds to the summoner's character, there would be no conflict of personality. Or interest," he added, amused; and far too abruptly to genuinely not care.

In a way, she was impressed. The level of empathy required to think that it was she who should ultimately decide whether she wanted the gift— Of course, a merchant and a diplomat must know the carrots, and not only the sticks.

"That is… very thoughtful of you, brother," she replied nonetheless; and smiled. "Thank you."

"As a matter of fact," she added, rummaging through her own stuff, "I have something for you as well. I have been planning to give it to you later, when we actually parted, but, since you had to hurry up with your own present—"

She waited for the man's reaction; and, trying to chase away the butterflies from her stomach, said, "Did you know that it's possible to talk to a familiar, brother? It can also serve as a scout, or a trap-finder, and it sometimes has a bit of magic of its own…" She bit her lip.

Her brother's face set into a mask. "Have I made a fool of myself, sister?" he asked simply.

"What?" Imoen, bemused, asked first; and then, finally understanding, vehemently replied, "No."

"Then I am grateful for your most insightful gift, sister," Sarevok replied stiffly, formally, as if he were speaking to a stranger he were thanking for some princely bequest; and she wanted to hit him. It was not she who had started on the personal business this time. He should have known better than to try this gambit when they still had time to spend with each other, and not expect her to retaliate in kind.

And he must understand this: for suddenly, forcibly—she could literally see the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders slacken—he relaxed, as if saying that he was damned already and to the Abyss with all—and smirked. "Well, why not?" he laughed to himself, and fairly tore from the ground.

"Why not?" Imoen laughed in agreement; and followed.

_---_

A dark spot appeared on the blinding background of the sun's disc; then, it grew; and grew still. The golden eagle gave out a massive cry and swooped down rapidly, halting only at the last moment to settle on the man's expectantly outstretched forearm.

**Show-off.**

I don't think there has ever been any doubt of that, Imoen thought, laughing at the expression of pure, unadulterated, unselfconscious bliss on her brother's face. Sarevok looked as if someone told him he was about to ascend to the Throne of Blood right _now_.

Well, this was, at the end of the day, about the only thing he would ever be happy with, she laughed. Himself: big, golden, with sharp talons and absolutely no regard for human life— Familiars, after all, responded to the summoner's own personality.

**Familiars are s'pposed to be small, y'know. But that chick— What d'ya think her wingspan is?**

I think that this works on a slightly different scale for him, Imoen thought. Er, by the way, you are my familiar, I take it? Only I can't see you, so you must be behind me… If I turn around, what will I see?

**Nuh-nuh. Ain't tellin' ya that. Why don'tcha turn round and see for yerself?**

Imoen turned around. Slowly.

"Oh."

_---_

The cat was very small, barely out of kittenhood, and mostly grey, with rosy points on the snout, ears, paws and the tip of its tail; he was a he and he had a slightly triangular head and a pair of the bluest eyes Imoen had ever seen. Somewhere in the back of her brain, a name appeared: Wichien-maat. Moon Diamond.

What? she thought indignantly. Are you kidding me? I'm not calling you that! You're Pangur.

The cat whipped his tail, and, she was sure, would have shrugged if he could. **Oh, well. Was worth a try?**

Right. Come here, you.

**Nope. Pangur, y'say? Like in that old verse?**

Yes. I happen to like it, thank you very much. By the way, I'm Imoen. Why won't you come here?

'**Cause I like it where I am, of course.**

Imoen rolled her eyes. No conflict of personality or interest, yeah, right…

**Yeah. Right. Oh, and, by the way. Glad t'meetcha. Though I kinda knew that already, y'know? Yer name, I mean. Tell me who's the birdie with the brawn, though. I feel like huntin'.**

At which point, Imoen cocked an eyebrow; and, turning back to face her brother, said, "Sarevok—"

She did not finish: two things interrupted her almost immediately. The first was the sight of her brother, petting carefully the feathers on the predator's eagerly crooked head; Sarevok and his eagle were clearly still lost deep within their private paradise.

The second was the feel of small, but extremely sharp, claws biting into her skin as something grabbed her left leg and scrambled up it and up her back, finally to settle on her left shoulder, in just the proper spot for its breath to tickle her on the ear. She looked at the patch of grey and rosy fur from the corner of her eye and hissed out, "Get off."

When she lifted her gaze again, Sarevok was looking at her.

"So, sister," he said, with a glimmer of terminal amusement in his eyes, "I see that you have become acquainted with your new custodian. If I may, therefore, introduce an-Nasr at-Taïr?"

Imoen looked from her brother to her brother's eagle. "An-Nasr at-Taïr?" she repeated weakly. "Please tell me— No," she said. "First thing first. Do keep that eagle away from my cat, brother. She's looking at him meaningfully. I think that she wants to eat him."

Sarevok crooked his head. "How odd, sister," he said. "She had the strangest impression that your cat wanted to eat her. Something about meaningful looks—"

_---_

At-Taïr cried out again when Sarevok released her with the orders to seek out a forest which ought to be nearby: a high, ear-splitting cry. Imoen's brother followed the eagle with an enchanted, enamoured gaze; for a moment, he looked again, for all the things in the world, like a schoolboy smitten with love for the first time in his life.

Pangur, after a great deal of protests—all suddenly silenced when he was presented with a piece of meat to bite into—was set to watching the siblings' packs. He was, as he proudly announced, quite resistant to magic; even so, Imoen would much rather he were not hit by some stray lightning bolt or ice storm when the practice started again.

(The healing potions had been of much use.)

_---_

The workout was a fascinating experience, in many respects; not the least of which was that, for the first time in her life, Imoen found herself being not only the student, but also the tutor.

They had discovered this on the day before, in the evening, when they had been scribing the scrolls they had bought: between themselves, they shared a surprisingly great deal of knowledge of elementary combat magic, but it was unevenly distributed. Edwin had taught Imoen a mix of basic offensive spells and illusions from several schools; Sarevok's learning was drastically different.

"All right," Imoen then said over her chocolate, looking at the neatly scribbled rows and columns of runes, "so, here's magic missile, chromatic orb, and, you say, that acid arrow and those stone skins I'm trying out tomorrow— This one is vocalise, and this one is magic dispelling. But the rest?"

Her brother, all old gold and myrrh, and sipping his own rich chocolate, shrugged. "Abjuration, divination, enchantments and necromancy. The first to protect against wizards, the second to dispel illusions, and the last two to control the living and the undead. I can do the killing myself."

Imoen repeated the summary in her mind. "You must be really set on finding Irenicus, brother," she said.

"I am surprised that you are not," Sarevok replied calmly. "He killed two of your party, too."

"You are correct, however," he added. "I sent for news from Aran as soon as we arrived in the city. Apparently, he managed to convince the paladins to join the Thieves against the vampires, and they are combing the crypts under the old graveyard. But Irenicus hasn't resurfaced."

"He may be dead."

"There is no reason why he should be dead, sister."

"What did he do to you?"

The question burst out on its own, and she regretted it immediately: it touched on the personal matters they had both tacitly agreed not to talk about. For a moment, she had a vision of a much younger herself, yelling, How come you're so sane all of a sudden?! She snorted: how she could have expected to receive an answer was beyond her.

But there was also another, much fresher memory.

"I mean, brother…" she said. "I saw you. As you are."

There was a glimmer of curiosity as Sarevok leaned back in his chair. "You saw me," he repeated thoughtfully. "I did not know that you could see the truth of matter, sister."

"Sometimes," Imoen replied. "But don't change the topic. You're barely holding yourself together, brother. There's this veneer of coldness, but underneath it, it's all hot and boiling and trying to escape—but, my point, actually, is, you are holding together."

Sarevok was watching her coolly, clinically, without any great hostility, but without any promise to satisfy her curiosity, either; and she found herself adding, "If this is about what's between you and Father, then I know about it already. Or," she corrected herself, "at least, I suspect."

The expression changed to a sort of wondrous amusement. "I think," the man laughed, "that I should have killed you when I still had the chance, sister. Nevertheless. If you know that much already, then yes, I will tell you all, and hopefully satisfy that infernal nosiness which surfaces ever so often in those loaded remarks about my sleep— On one condition."

Imoen put away her quill and pushed back her own chair. "What condition would that be, brother?"

"Quid pro quo."

"Quid pro quo."

"Yes," Sarevok replied, standing up from the desk, and crossing the room over to a small table standing in a nearby corner. "You wish to speak of Irenicus, sister. Then we shall. But both."

"The wizard did not explain himself," he spoke on calmly in the pregnant silence which fell. "However, by comparing our… experiences, we may—or, at least, given your disinterest in the topic: I may—learn something of him."

He turned around, returned to the desk and offered a glass filled with a golden liquid to Imoen. "Sherry," he explained. "To loosen tongues and blunt the pain, should you agree to the terms of the compact."

"No, thanks," Imoen replied. "Chocolate will be enough for now, I think— You drink too much, brother."

"Do I," the man said, watching the glass of sherry in the light of the chandelier suspended under the ceiling. "Drink and fornication: poor man's substitutes for killing and murder— Is that what you mean, sister? But one has to do something in bed when one cannot sleep." He downed the cup; and, after a momentary consideration, also the other.

"Where is Mical?" his sister asked, suddenly interested.

"In bed. Asleep. Or, perhaps, with his friends. Or his mother. Or his girl. How should I know? He isn't plotting your murder for his humiliation, if this is what you are asking. He's too terrified of you to attempt that, sister. But we were to speak of Irenicus— This is what I need him for, in fact."

"What is what you need him for?" Imoen asked, uncomprehending.

A brief, private half-smile crossed Sarevok's face as he sprawled himself lazily in his chair again. "No. First: do you agree to the compact, sister?"

The scrolls were all forgotten by now. "You know perfectly that I do, brother."

"Then, by all means, let us speak of Irenicus. Irenicus," the man said dryly, "did me a great favour, one for which I will have to thank him before I kill him: he took a rabid animal, and mutilated it until it turned back into the resemblance of a man. Since I was an animal, he treated me like an animal… He made me relearn my mortal body: he hurt me, so that I would feel pain; he kept me hungry and thirsty, so that I would remember the import of drink and fodder; he took away my sleep; he made me aroused and afraid and— In short, he bolstered my every single animal impulse and instinct; every single one, save the one to kill: there was no one to kill. In the end, my mortal half prevailed; and I… remembered myself, I have no other word for it. That was the beginning."

He took a sip of the chocolate from his cup, and continued, "At first, a glimmer of sanity: I tried to hide myself in insanity. Hide: the insane, obviously, has nothing to hide. Irenicus found me out in no time; when he did, he moved on to other things. Feelings. Emotions. I remember when he flayed Semaj—" He broke off, took another sip, and continued in the same tone, "I don't believe you ever met Semaj. He was a… friend, of sorts. Might have been a lover, I do not remember. But I watched him and heard his screams and felt his pain and— I really did feel his pain," he repeated, as if he did not expect her to believe him. "And then, Irenicus did not let me kill him. But he let me kill Angelo. Odd: all I now remember of Angelo is his name, and that skinless mask instead of a face… It had still felt like a good thing to kill him, and not only because it was my first kill in months. I wrung his neck when we were left together alone for a moment—"

"In any case, slowly, piece by piece, as I gained control, the taint started to disentangle and separate from my human self. What Irenicus meant to achieve beyond this, I don't know; but I think that that time, the success of his experiments surprised even him… This time, I did manage to hide: I pretended to be still barely in control of myself… but I started to plan. I saw you as you were returned to your cage after some or other session of your own; I understood that you must be a sibling—"

He looked up at her. "Your turn, sister. What did Irenicus do to you?"

Imoen frowned; but Sarevok was not really interested in her feelings, she reminded herself. He only wanted information about Irenicus.

The thought cheered her up, and she set out to try and join lost fragments of sensations into a coherent whole; to fashion feelings into words; to stay herself, but remember that hurt, maimed, terrified, ignorant girl—

"Ignorance," she said aloud. Yes: that was the key. "He— I think that, above all, he made me feel… powerless. Vulnerable. He explained nothing. He kept me weak, like you say he did with you. He cast his spells, and he cut me with those knives, and he hurt Xan and Kivan, and he told me to watch, but he never said what to watch for. He— I remember that feeling of complete ignorance about what was going on and uncertainty about what was going to happen next… There were moments when I just wished he told me what he wanted from me, just so that I could do it and he could kill me, because, I thought, anything would be better than that complete randomness—"

"He… He made sure that I knew that he was the one who was in power. But that was all I was to know. Apart from that… No rules. He could get everywhere—I mean, I don't think he raped me, I don't think he can, those dryads said something about that, I think—but he could get everywhere into my brain, my mind, and I was just stuck in that cage, with nowhere to escape—"

"I think," she added suddenly, "that he might have been trying for what happened in Mae'Var's guild. When I—killed Viconia. Murdered her. He wanted to make me feel so helpless and out of control that I would finally find my way into the taint? Except that it did not really work out… He was just too good at what he did. Too powerful. There was just no reason to fight him. There was even a reason to fight you, but not him. And I knew what you wanted."

She gulped down the rest of her chocolate. It was cold.

She did not refuse the sherry this time; it burned in her throat. "He wanted two Bhaalspawn steaks, medium rare," she said thoughtfully. "But at what dinner?"

"Us as we are now," her brother agreed. "Aware of our powers, but not overcome by them."

"No," Imoen corrected. "He wanted us on edge, not in control of ourselves. In control, we could have refused to do what he wanted… He sure said a lot about untapped potential— Wait a moment. I remember. He said that about you as well, didn't he? I remember when I thought you'd use me as your test bunny— But you— Father—"

Wide-eyed, she asked, "That's what you need Irenicus for, isn't it? You can't reach into your other self, I think. Not much. Not without straining yourself. You're keeping it contained, but when you draw on it, Father makes you pay for it. And, if there's a body who knows how to get around this, it's Irenicus… Oh, crap. How long has it been for you like this, brother?"

Sarevok crooked his head. "Have you drunk a potion of insight, sister? I call unfair advantage."

"There is no unfair advantage, brother," Imoen retorted, nonetheless pulling out another flask and throwing it in her brother's general direction; as he caught it easily mid-air and drunk it all in one go, she said, "And you're trying to change the topic again. Because that's why you're learning charms, isn't it? You want to capture Irenicus. Not kill him."

Sarevok laughed. "No, sister, I do not want to kill him. Not immediately."

Imoen blinked at this blank statement, decided to avoid all the moral issues which suddenly forced themselves into her mind, and opted to say, instead, "Little brother, he must have years of experience in magic over you. What chances do you think you have?"

"What options do you think I have, little sister?" the man asked calmly. "If there existed a means which permitted me to hunt Irenicus at leisure, do you think I would be so foolish as not to exploit it?"

"You _are_ holding yourself together, brother."

"Yes," Sarevok replied, with clear disgust in his voice. "I am, as you put it so aptly, sister, 'holding myself together.' Through denying half of my identity; through abstaining from drawing on my birthright and my heritage; through depriving myself of the potential to develop and become what I ought to be—I am _holding myself together_. And, make no mistake: if I must, I shall. I have will enough for that. If it takes this wretched, pitiful half-life to destroy the kinfolk, wipe out the board and reap the ultimate prize—then, sister, so shall it be. Am I not doted enough on my own? Had my mother not passed to me gifts of her own before she chose to sacrifice me on her god's darkest altar? And have I let these assets lie idle, like so many fools do, never achieving mediocrity where, with a modicum of resolve, they might reach excellence? Look at me, sister," he implored suddenly. "Look at me. Am I, even as a base human, not as worthy of godhood as that obsolete cretin who dares call himself our Father?"

Imoen, who, by this time, thought that she had seen all of her brother's antics, slowly closed her mouth, blinked, and said, trying for casualness, "So that's how you did it."

He wasn't even particularly trying, she thought. He knows better than to try to play for effect with me. But—

The man frowned. "Did what, sister?"

"Narked Father into trying to kill you," Imoen replied vaguely, before amending, "I mean— I was wrong. Irenicus didn't really do anything to you, did he, brother? At most, he brought you half the way. To the edge. Made you feel. But to think, you started on your own… When you don't kill people in your sleep, when you don't draw on the taint when you should, even when you're angry—that cold shell over the fire, you do it to you yourself, you did it to you yourself, and that's how… That's your armour. You're simply even more angry at Father for fiddling you— How?" she asked, not bothering to hide her curiosity anymore. "You told me you would tell me. How did you do it?"

Sarevok looked at her oddly, before laughing lightly. "The first time, you mean?"

When Imoen nodded, he shrugged. "I can learn from my mistakes, sister. I made an error in judgement—"

This time, Imoen did not halt her tongue. "You call almost starting a war an error in judgement, brother?! I'm curious, you know. What would be a major blunder on that scale? Actually exterminating a nation? A continent?"

Her brother's eyes glimmered lightly as he finished, "—and let myself be used. But Irenicus spoke of unrealised potential, when I had thought I had reached the end of my capabilities in this mortal body; and there was no reason to distrust him. He had no purpose in lying. And I should have had no purpose in striking a war of, for lack of a better word, innocents; I should have gone straight for the kin. I realised this, slowly—"

He smirked briefly, bitterly. "Even so… At first, even as we escaped, I thought that the difficulty in reaching into the taint was the residue of Irenicus' ministrations; that it would pass with time. It did not pass with time. You suspicions are correct, sister." The smirk twisted into a much crueller version of itself, and Imoen had the sudden impression that Sarevok was almost daring her to comment on his weakness. "It is not entirely of my choice that I must only be human. Father makes sure that I know the price of my survival."

Imoen, with her head on her forearms, and her forearms crossed on the desk, looked up at her brother, and said only, "But you healed Cernd."

This time, Sarevok was quite clearly amused. "Little sister. You practically dared me to do it. How was I to refuse the challenge?"

"I did not know I was baiting you," Imoen replied. "Damn. So many lost opportunities."

A smile appeared, and quickly disappeared, as Sarevok said, "You want to know how to protect yourself, I take it? That is why you asked? You might as well have asked Cernd how he broke off his own addiction… You just live, knowing that nothing human can measure up to the killing. You find a reason to live, fix yourself a goal. Ambition. Vengeance. Love, if you're sadistically inclined."

"A throne."

"Yes."

Suddenly fed up and angry, Imoen said, looking into the glimmering, inhuman eyes, "You know, brother, I can see that you really care for it. Really, really care. And you know what? I think that yes, you would make for as good a god as half that bunch out there, and I would really wish you the best of luck in your endeavour… if only it did not involve my dying in the process."

An angry scowl crossed the man's face. "I told you, sister," he said. "If, when, at the end of things, I stand before the Throne of Blood, over the fallen body of our Father, and the gods announce their verdict and count me into their kind—if, then, you are not there, it will not be because I will have willingly, knowingly, struck out first against you. I told you this. And I am not Father. I am not in the habit of breaking my word."

Imoen snorted. "But if you are there, and I am not, then this will only mean that someone else will have killed me, will it not? One child to rise and claim the father's legacy. For the rest—nothing. You may not kill me by your hand, brother. But the arithmetic remains the same. If you live, I die."

For a moment, the man only watched her in silence; then, at last, he stroked his hand across his naked scalp, over the new tattoo which graced it, and then all the way to the back of his neck; and she remembered, completely inappropriately, how had been considering earrings, earrings with rubies and king's tears in them, but, in the end, rejected the idea—because earrings were, after all, so terribly impractical—

"There is a new choral quartet in the city," he said at last. "Amicae Aleninae. From the north. I have heard good things spoken about them— It is still early. Why don't we call it a night, sister?" He gestured lazily to the scrolls.

"You know that you can't show in the inn, brother. If the bards recognise you, the High Merchant will have to arrest you," Imoen, unswayed, replied.

Her brother looked at her indolently. "I meant to invite them here, sister," he said.

For a moment, Imoen did not comprehend. "Here? Oh, yes," she said as she suddenly remembered. "We're rich. We're rich, and we're young, and we're healthy, and we're not some half-wit idiots, either. And we're not being tortured, and no one is trying to kill us right now, and we're not trying to kill each other anymore, and we even have a home, even if it's not really our home. We should be happy. Why aren't we happy? No, brother," she said, seeing that Sarevok moved, as if he wanted to say something. "I know that you're about to say something to cheer me up. Do not try to cheer me up, brother. Not you. Not today. I don't want to be cheered up by you today. Let's just learn magic today. But tomorrow… don't let's fight tomorrow. It's our last day together. Let's try to make it a good day tomorrow, shall we, brother?"

_---_

They tried to make it a good day; and, as Imoen offered to Sarevok a most shocking grasp, and showed him how to juggle Melf's Minute Meteors, and froze the surface of the water in the lake and the cups with the spiced milk in it; Pangur immensely enjoyed the resulting ice cream—and as Sarevok showed his sister how to deflect spells, and reflect them back at the caster, and how to protect herself from fire, and cold, and acid, and electricity, and how to take down minor wizarding protections; and as they both put up fire shields, red to protect them from fire, and blue to them protect from cold—it was. Practice of magic could be done quid pro quo; and stone skins, Imoen decided, were, indeed, useful.

Then, an-Nasr at-Taïr returned, carrying a roe deer in her talons.

_---_

They were laughing when the eagle cried, for some minor reason or other; but, at the cry of the eagle, they looked up. At-Taïr dove to land before them; she dropped the roe at their feet and, clearly proud of herself, settled on Sarevok's braced forearm.

**Whoa. She's tough. I like that in chicks.**

Cuff it, Pangur, Imoen ordered: Pangur had jumped off her shoulder, and was now inspecting the deer carefully, nudging it with his nose. "So, brother," she said, pulling out a healing potion. "You have a hunting bird."

"She found it in the forest, she tells me, and thought that we might do with fresh meat," Sarevok said, kneeling next to her and the deer, and letting at-Taïr hop off to the ground. "What are you doing, sister?"

"What does it look like? It's still alive, my cat tells me. We have food. And a crisp roast on fresh air is great, I agree, but I'm not skinning it. Are you skinning it?"

"No," Sarevok replied firmly. "But we might take it back to the city."

"For Itona? We might," Imoen said; the wounds on the roe's body had almost closed by this time, "but we won't. Help me, brother."

Together, they set the roe on its legs. "Run," Imoen said, and added, "If you know any dryads, tell them that we would speak to them. We have some acorns to give them." The chances that the deer understood human were almost non-existent, but, after the time spent with the druids, she decided not to disregard any, however minimal, chance that it just might.

She smiled, and added, "Two men behind you, brother. The one on your left is pulling out a crossbow."

"Three men behind you, sister," Sarevok replied calmly.


	21. IV: Knights' Attack, 2

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**2**

Later, Imoen could not recall what started the fight.

Back to back with Sarevok, she was casting: Pangur, sit, she had ordered the cat as if he were a dog, and now, a cone of iciness so cold that it burnt left the tips of her fingers. She had aimed it a bit wrong, and it only touched on the leftmost of the three men, the one with the crossbow.

Sarevok finished casting his own spell, and unsheathed the Chaos Edge; so, if her stone skins ran out, she would turn the ring on her finger and herself invisible. Protected from unenchanted weapons, her brother could afford to draw all the fire to himself.

In the corner of her vision, at-Taïr, crying and crowing, threw herself on the one with the crossbow; in the other corner, the one with the mace had hidden himself behind a massive, crude shield, and had been almost untouched by the spell. She must deal with him later; she turned to the man in front, the one with the sword.

She calmly accepted the blows on the stone skins; she was almost finished casting again. "—_ockien_!" she yelled out, and two flame arrows ran at her target, the first hitting high, between the eyes, the other low, in the groin; but the ruffian still lived. By pure reflex, she dodged the one with the mace, and started another cast.

A croak of a magic shield firing off behind her, followed by her brother's surprised hiss. Welcome to Amn, she thought. Magic strictly regulated. So strictly, even bandits have access to it.

Pangur, the insolent creature, now a blur of rose and grey, ran up the one with the mace; she finished casting the acid arrow; the one with the sword fell to the ground; the one with the mace fell, too; at-Taïr's triumphant cry rose to the air, because she, too, had caught her prey; behind her, someone cried, "Torm—!"

The cry ended in a surprised gargle; but, behind her, Imoen could feel Sarevok stiffen, just for a moment. He must be thinking the same as she.

What kind of bandit calls to Torm for aid?

Around them, the world started to change, twist and turn; the dirty, unkempt, pock-marked face of the man she had killed morphed into a much younger, much cleaner, clean-shaven face; the dirty, patched leather of the armour became a shining plate, and she realised what had been bothering her about the man's moves, for he had not been moving deftly, like a man in a leather armour, but slowly, like a knight in plates; and the dirty pouch on his neck altered into a holy symbol, Tyr's holy symbol, still, even after the knight's death, surrounded by an aura of sanctity to her other eyes.

Behind her, Sarevok went rigid again; at-Taïr, still proud of herself, circled above their heads, crying their victory and their future doom.

**Like, what ait'cha waitin' for? Kill 'im, now!**

She blinked and, slowly, shifted her gaze to the one with the mace. He, too, had changed: instead of an old, slim, ferret-like face with an eye-patch and a frame of long, greasy white hair under a rusty helmet, she was looking at a bareheaded brown-haired youth about her own age, with a square face, a strong chin, and on it, a beard cropped nearly as neatly as her brother's. He was dressed in splint mail, and the shield he had hidden behind, now loosened from his slackened hand, was no longer crude, but very beautifully crafted, with the insignia of a ring and a crimson rhodelia on it; she had the feeling that it was a family heirloom.

Pangur was sitting on top of the boy-man's chest, looking, in a way, as proud of himself as at-Taïr was.

"You mean he's not dead?" she asked aloud.

**Nope. Jus' knock'd out. Will wake soon, tho'. Better kill 'im fast.**

Evidently done with the topic, the cat wrinkled his nose, lifted his forepaw and started to wash himself; Imoen unfroze from her shock, darted to the youth and started to search him for weapons.

"Sarevok! Quickly! Some rope. This one's still alive. Off," she told Pangur. "Thank you, but off."

**Wha'? **the disoriented cat protested as she whisked him off the man; but Imoen paid him little heed. Sarevok was already kneeling next to her, but instead for a rope, he was reaching to his belt for a hunting knife, that abyssal greensteel knife he had bought off a tiefling trader in Trademeet.

"Don't! This would be—"

She hesitated: yes. That was where the argument rather failed with this particular man; and he, for a moment all smooth, glittering and hateful again, knew it perfectly as he asked, in a lightly mocking tone, "Murder, little sister? I can live with that."

"Yes, but I can't!" Imoen blurted. "And I was going to say, stupidity," she lied.

Sarevok frowned. "He is the only witness, sister."

"Yes, the only witness who can tell me who framed me into this. Any decent diviner can tell the rest! I don't know who these people are, paladins, for all I know—"

"Yes."

"—but I wouldn't have attacked them if I hadn't thought they wanted to attack me. Even if you would, brother—" She blinked. "What do you mean, yes?"

Her brother sighed, sheathed the knife, and, pulling a strap of leather from his bag and passing it to Imoen as he lifted the unconscious man so that she could bind his hands behind his back, he nodded at the man she had killed and said, "A weak chin. A bloated, porcine face with a most cretinous expression. And a distinctive helmet. He's an Ilvastarr of Waterdeep, sister, and the last time I checked, there was only one Ilvastarr who wore Tyr's sign in Amn. The man who shot at me was a woman, Irlana de Bergerac: a beauty such as launches a thousand ships to war, and an ace with a crossbow, I was told."

"The one who yelled to Torm," he said as they put the bound man back to the ground and stood up, "was Keldorn Firecam, easily recognisable by his bespoke full plate—"

They turned around. The body of an old, many-scarred knight lay there, with a large hole through the chest where the Edge of Chaos had pierced the bespoke full plate.

"—and his famed Hallowed Redeemer," Sarevok narrated unemotionally, pointing to the knight's sword, "which, I have been told, he was granted by his god as a boon for faithful service—so faithful, in fact, that his wife regularly paid your former guild-master a fortune in blackmail—"

"You lie!" they heard then a furious, high-pitched voice behind them. "Lady Maria would never stoop to paying blackmail!"

They turned back; the young knight had awoken and was thrashing himself on the ground wildly in an attempt to untie the tight bonds.

Sarevok crooked his head, and, clearly amused by the sight, said, "No objections to the allegations of adultery, though? Do you perhaps have firsthand evidence that they are true, squire?"

The other man, by now red-cheeked from exertion, hissed out, "Hold your lying tongue, fiend, before—"

"Before?" Sarevok inquired politely, with a pointed look and a faint trace of a growl in the back of his voice. He was still amused more than irritated; but there was no way the young knight could know this. He paled, made one more desperate move, and fell silent.

Sarevok shrugged, and continued, "The one Altair got— No. I don't know him," he admitted as Imoen saw the mess of raw flesh and blood into which the eagle's talons had turned the man's face. It was barely recognisable as a face, as it was. "Which brings us back to your captive," he finished, looking back at the man at their feet. "Given the company he kept, and the markings on his shield, I would say that he is Firecam's squire—"

"Anomen, son of Cor and Moirala, heir to the House Delryn," the man finished through clenched teeth. "You will not sully my line with your words, beast."

A brief twitch crossed Sarevok's face. "So, here they are, sister," he said lightly as he put out his hand for his eagle to perch on. "The Radiant Heart of Athkatla."

---

The man on the ground was looking at her with wide eyes; Sarevok, too, must have realised that he had finally committed the inevitable slip-up, because he looked from Delryn to his eagle to his belt where he had the knife, with a distracted kind of look, as if wondering whether he should not kill the hostage anyway, witness in possession of evidence or not. Oddly enough, Imoen herself was, perhaps, the least concerned about revealing her precedence to yet another person.

That quickly changed.

The bound man's eyes narrowed, and, quickly, venomously, contemptuously, he started to speak, "I see, blackguard, that you found yourself an apt partner in wanton crime! A murderous harlot of your own unholy descent—"

Imoen took one look at her brother, who was not tense, and not taut, but was no longer amused, either; and, touching him briefly to get his attention, motioned him away from the bodies, and to the side.

---

Pangur, obviously tired by the fight, barely opened a cornflower eye to check who they were before going back to sleep among their belongings.

Sarevok, picking himself a sweetmeat and trying to feed it to Altair, who was intent on refusing it, said, over the stream of insults still audible in the background, "I suspect, sister, that you know that it was not my plan for the events to turn such way; and I suspect that you had taken into consideration the possibility that they might turn this way when you agreed to our… enterprise. Nevertheless, for what it is worth, I apologise."

"You do not apologise, brother," Imoen reminded him calmly, patting Deneb's back, before adding, "I know that you know better than to try to defend me, brother, but I definitely suspect that you think that what that man needs is a firm kick to the gut to silence him. That is why I thank you for refraining from beating him up."

"He will shut up once he realises that he has no audience," Sarevok replied; but she could still see how he uncoiled slowly.

"I know, brother." She sighed. "Why 'harlot,' though? I can understand the rest, but 'harlot'? It's you who goes around depraving innocent boys—" Seeing the man's amused expression, she added, "And you're no better, you know. Did you really have to go around insulting the wife of the man you had just killed? It was low, brother."

"It was the truth, sister."

"It's not the point, brother. What do we do with him next?"

"Your solution, I take it, would be to appeal to his sense of duty? A Helmite should realise the possibility that you have been misled, and that you may be an injured party."

"He's a Helmite? And it's: we may, brother."

"Yes, he is. And no, it's: you may. You heard him: he knows my identity. They have come here to capture me, and, if they had tried it without the illusion, I would have fought equally as I did. You were correct: the illusion was not for my sake, sister. It was to make sure that you would fight on my side."

Imoen frowned. "I was careful in the pubs. I really don't think anyone should know that we are here. Even the cooks only knew that we were going out for a ride."

"I think, sister," her brother, who finally managed to convince his eagle to eat the pastry, replied, "that a wizard capable of creating an illusion which fooled me into believing that five paladins were bandits can easily afford long-distance teleportation. For all we know, the paladins were still in Athkatla this morning."

"It can't be Irenicus. He would simply catch us, not play with us… Your solution would be to beat out of him who told them we're here?" She nodded in the general direction of where the string of calumnies had just stopped flowing.

Sarevok laughed lightly. "That might take some work, if it worked at all. It is harder to extract accurate information through physical means than the uninitiated think, sister. Even a Helmite might find merit and excuse for lying in such circumstance. I thought rather that if your innate charm doesn't work on him—"

"—you might charm him, is that what you are saying?" Imoen asked desperately. She really hoped that it was not what Sarevok was saying. Messing around people's minds… She had not even realised how much what she had been doing to Cernd had been like what Irenicus had been doing to her until the previous night's talk. But this was closer still. This was practically the same thing. Or even exactly the same thing.

Her brother, frozen half-way through giving another piece of pastry to his bird, watched her calmly. "Yes."

---

They first searched the bodies, of course; but found nothing.

Delryn had rolled away slightly from where they had left him, but, restricted by his mail, he had not managed to untangle his bonds. Imoen sighed as they approached him: they had killed his superiors, tied him up, and were now expecting him to listen to her arguments. And if he did not, they would start messing around with his mind; as if that would help him understand her point.

Of course, the squire did not make it easy to understand his point, either.

"The butchers return," he sneered at them as soon as he saw them. "Aren't you content with yourselves yet? Have you come to finish your job?"

"No," Imoen replied, kneeling next to the man, but away from his legs, so that he would not kick her. He was terrified; she could see it in the corners of his eyes; he was trying to hide it, but it was obvious. What was he thinking they were going to do to him?

Eyeing critically him in his splint mail, she asked, "Can you sit in that thing?"

There was no reply, so she turned to Sarevok, "Can he sit in that thing, brother? If he can, prop him up, will you? And untie him."

Their prisoner struggled through each step of the procedure; but, once his wrists were free and circulation started to return to them, he looked ready to leap and dart off, splint mail and all; or, possibly, to leap and attack them.

"Stay, squire," he heard as a heavy palm landed on his shoulder. "My sister would speak with you."

"We really only want to talk to you," Imoen added even as the man, trying to tug away from the clamp-like grasp, hissed, "Murderers and degenerates shall learn nothing from me."

"Look," Imoen interrupted, "Can you sort of… try not to curse us every second word? I'm not sure if you noticed, but you're still alive?" It worked with me, she thought. Eventually. "We really only want to talk," she repeated.

The man looked at her with pure spite. "Are you so daft, Bhaalspawn, as to think that a squire of the Order of Most Radiant Heart will be fooled into revealing intelligence?"

"This one, I believe, will not," Sarevok said softly.

The squire grew red again. "For this, Anchev, and for what you said of the Lady Maria before, I would challenge you to a duel of honour. Had you any honour to repair the grievance with."

"A convenient excuse," Sarevok observed. "And, of course, Delryn, you are still a squire, which makes a duel completely impossible— Who told you I was here?"

"Jier— Nay! I am aware of what evil scheme you concoct here, Bhaalspawn. The good and the bad—"

"—and don't let's forget the ugly," Sarevok interjected smoothly. The hand clamped on the shoulder travelled slowly up the collar of the man's armour and up his neck; for a moment, it played with a stray lock of brown hair, before withdrawing suddenly. "Ugly," Sarevok repeated, amused, before rising smoothly to his feet. "I tire of him, sister," he announced. "If you still want to talk to that boor, please yourself as you will. I won't. Call me when you have need of me."

Red like a freshly boiled lobster, for once at a loss for words, their hostage seemed at once frozen to the ground and about to explode. "Don't worry," Imoen said good-naturedly. "He said that he did not like you. So, unless—"

She did not have a chance to finish; the man sputtered, "How dare he imply—" He shivered. "It's revolting!"

Imoen shrugged. "How dared you, knight, imply that his sister was a whore the moment you met her? You owed him this one… Who told you we were here?"

The knight, still flummoxed, said, "Jierdan— No," he repeated as he realised again what he was doing, "I shall not betray an innocent man!" He looked at Imoen angrily, and added, "And you, whoever you are, are no lady."

The absurdity of this accusation halted Imoen for a moment, and gave the man an opportunity to stand up; but behind him, in the distance, she could already see Sarevok pull out a scroll; one of those scrolls they had used during the practice earlier that day. He skimmed over it briefly with a frown, and started casting a spell, without a word; how could he cast it without a word? She had not seen him—

"Stay, please," she cried out to the Helmite, also rising to her feet. "It's really important, see? That man, Jierdan, he's not really innocent. He framed us into killing your people. We must find him, and if you go with us, you'll see—"

"Yes," the man said, reaching for his mace and shield, "I shall see the full depth of your accursed kin's depravity as you murder a civilian, shall I not?"

"Oh, damn!" Imoen said, watching Sarevok finish his casting behind the man's back, "Look, Delryn, or whatever you're called, I'm really sorry! I really didn't want it to go like this!"

The spell of dire charm hit its target; and the knight smiled broadly, with a smile which pierced her heart as accurately as any of her Father's daggers. "Of course, my lady," he said. "I understand. You did not mean it."

---

It was done; and they had, at most, a few moments to use before the spell dissolved.

"Put your weapons on the ground, and tell me Jierdan's full name and where to find him," she ordered.

"Lord Jierdan Firkraag, fifth Baron Windspear," she heard as the man complied and Sarevok approached them. "His whereabouts, my lady, are not known to me."

"Who can know them?" Sarevok inquired, picking up the mace and the shield. "Come with us." He motioned to Imoen; they started to walk back towards the horses and the belongings.

The knight thought for a moment. "His tenants, possibly? Apart from Garren Windspear, I cannot think of a name at present, I'm afraid."

"What did Firkraag tell you?" Imoen asked. "Precisely?"

"Again, my lady, I'm afraid that I simply don't know," the man said, blushing slightly. "It was his court wizard who spoke with us and arranged our transport this way, and he spoke only with Sir Keldorn."

This time, it was Sarevok's time to ask, "When did that happen? Halt, keep your hands behind your back and let Imoen bind them."

"About two hours ago, Anchev."

Apparently, even a dire charm was not enough to have the knight start calling Sarevok a lord; Imoen found it a deeply satisfying thought as she asked, "When are you expected to report?"

Sarevok started to pick their saddles and load them onto Deneb and Grasshopper; she bound the prisoner's wrists again; he replied, smiling again, "Within two to three days, my lady."

Imoen exchanged a look with her brother. "Where does Garren Windspear live?" she asked Delryn as they bound him to the hoop of Imoen's saddle.

"Nearby, in a house— But if you think, wretches, that I will take you there, that you massacre a peaceful family in their sleep, know that you are in the wrong!"

**Whassgoin'on? Why's he screamin'? Can't he see a cat wants to sleep 'ere? Oh. It's him. D'ya like 'im?**

"Altair tells me that she saw a house by the forest," Sarevok commented calmly as Imoen picked Pangur (Yes, I do like him, Pangur. He's a fine catch. **Bit noisy, tho'.** Be nice to him. I hurt him.), as he called Altair from wherever she had gone when they had left to speak with their prisoner, and as they both mounted their horses.

"Are you going with me, brother?" she asked in the same tone. Delryn was suddenly silent; good. So, he wasn't completely thick-headed. If he were to be her only company in the days to come— She looked at her saddle, where her cat had rolled himself into sleep again, and amended: her only human company in the days to come—

"Do you forbid me to, sister?" she heard. "I would go. That man Firkraag sounds interesting. He either feuds against the paladins, or feuds against you. I would know whether, why and wherefore. And, when Irenicus was here, given what wizard Firkraag's wizard is, they must have met."

She nodded, and looked around. They were leaving the corpses of the paladins as they were, unburied, only tidied up a bit and arranged in a row under an outcropping which might provide some shadow until their reinforcements came.

How much time? she thought. Two to three days until the troops are expected back in Athkatla with Sarevok; then, perhaps, one or two days more… Unless Firkraag notifies the paladins earlier—

No. He won't. The damage has been done. Now, he only needs to wait.

"Four to five days, sister," she heard, and cast a look at the man with the eagle. The glimmer had a distinctly amused quality.

She smiled back. "Let's hunt, brother."


	22. IV: Knights' Attack, 3

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**3**

**Makes me all tired an' sleepy, tho'.**

Her cat had just finished explaining to her how, bein' a magical creature an' all, he could, if he was, like, real' lucky, knock a body out if he scratch'd'em, and Imoen vowed to herself to find a leash.

"Listen," she asked the man walking by her mare, "Are you really sure you don't want some water? Or to change with me? Or anything?"

Anomen, future Lord Delryn, now bareheaded, unarmed and bound, prisoner to two Children of Murder, replied nothing; with drooped head and clenched fists, he marched on in determined silence.

Sarevok, called Anchev by those intent on doing so and, unlike his sister, not weighed down by a prisoner, spurred his horse and, chased by his crying eagle, galloped back into his sibling's vicinity over the sandstone and water of the Windspear Hills, stirring up in the process clouds of dust and sprays of water; and, once in his chosen spot, called out, amusedly, "Leave him alone, sister. Delryn here only wants to suffer nobly in peace, does he not?"

The walking man said nothing; but his cheeks grew red as he firmly refused to take his eyes off the ground.

Imoen narrowed her eyes, and said, "You're a fine one to talk, Sir I'll Just Drown My Sorrows in Alcohol and Men."

"And women, sister," her brother laughed, reining in his dancing golden stallion. "Never be it said that I neglect half of mankind— No. Wait. That did not come out right—"

His sister scowled. "You're drunk, right? Drunk and crazy. Soon, it'll be bedtime stories all over again—"

"Shh, sister. Delryn is listening. You are ruining my reputation. But, yes, of course I am drunk; drunk on the unexpected furtherance of the pleasure of being in your divine presence—"

"—no doubt so that you can ruin my reputation even further," Imoen retorted mordantly; but Sarevok was no longer listening. Standing high in the stirrups, staring into the distance with an intent look, he said, with awe, "Speak of the devil— And she's fey."

Imoen followed his gaze. They had only just turned the corner of the path; there was a small meadow in front of them, and beyond it, a forest; and at the edge of the forest— "And in company," she observed.

Brightly, radiantly, smugly, Sarevok returned her look. "Yes, sister. But he's elf."

Imoen frowned. There was just no chance her brother was implying—

But, of course, he must be seeing those two through Altair's eyes; that's how he noticed the fox-like face and the pointed ears of the elf from this distance.

As they rode on, at a slow, regal walk which let their prisoner keep up with them without straining himself, she spotted a third figure beside the walking couple: a young roe deer. Whether it was the same one she had healed earlier, there was no telling; certainly, at the sight of Altair, it ran away into the forest.

Anomen Delryn had lifted his head slightly during the exchange; but, on hearing that the strangers in the distance were a fairy and an elf, quickly dropped it again. Imoen did not think she imagined the heavy, despondent sigh which escaped him at this point.

"Hey—" she started to say; but promptly broke off. They were now near enough the couple for her, too, to recognise the man's elven features. They were, to say the least, familiar.

"Little sister? You have gone pale?" she heard, absently; absently, "About that elf, brother," she replied. "You would have no chance with him. In fact, he's pretty known for this. As far as I remember."

"What do you mean, sister?" she heard; and who was asking her this was no longer the wild, dissolute creature her brother was when he let himself go, just a bit, but the man who had once engineered a war and whose mind, once put to a purpose, proved as sharp as the blade of his sword.

There was no chance to reply: the couple, hand in hand, came out to meet them. The woman was a dryad—definitely so: she had long, dark green hair and violet eyes in the perfect oval of her face; and this time, when Anomen Delryn lifted his head to look at her, he turned it away sharply, with a blush: for she barely had clothes on her barefoot, tanned, curvaceous body. The man was an elf—definitely so; and his hair was a shock of slightly reddish tinge of brown, and his eyes were green and bound within a green, matching, mask-like tattoo. He hadn't changed at all, if the confused remainders of her memories were any indication; he even still had leather armour on, a long bow on his back and a long sword by his side.

He, too, recognised her. Eventually.

Recall glimmered in his eyes, his thief's, thieving eyes; but already did they steal to Sarevok, his eyes, his bags, his eagle and his horse; then, briefly, to Delryn; for a moment, they stopped with obvious curiosity on the knight's bonds; finally, they returned to her, first brushing lightly over one of her scars, and then kissing the other; taking in passing her lighter, rosy hair; turning, appreciatively, lower, to—

"Hello, Coran," she said amiably. "Long time, no see."

---

The scoundrel beamed; memories returned.

Not many of them, for he had not stayed in the company long—though long enough: long enough to teach her all his thieving tricks; long enough for that particular story of a teacher and an apprentice—a much less knowledgeable apprentice than Edwin Odesseiron's: less knowledgeable by exactly this particular experience—to come to a much more commonplace end. That it had, she knew: not from memories, but from memories of feelings about the memories; for the original memories were lost. Perhaps she, too, had something to thank Irenicus for.

It was a nauseating conclusion; but, already, the elf said cheerfully, "Imoen! What a wonderful surprise! And what lucky reunion!"

"I don't doubt it," she replied, acutely aware that her brother was watching, listening, considering, concluding; and then, looking at the dryad, added, "After all, luck, as always, is with the romantics, isn't it, Coran?"

"That it is!" the elf laughed merrily, obviously oblivious to the tinge of sarcasm in her voice. In the corner of her eye, she could see Sarevok look at her with equal parts light amusement and light question; but her attention was fixed on her life's first lover. How could it be possible that he had not heard the irony; that he had taken her words at face value? Was he so changed— Or was that she—?

But then, some things were not worth mulling about. A brisk nod to the right while getting off Deneb's back, "Meet my brother, Sarevok Anchev of Baldur's Gate." A nod to the left while her brother was smoothly taking the full-name cue, coolly dismounting, and ducally straightening himself to his full seven feet of height, those two feet he was taller than either her or Coran, "and our squire, Anomen Delryn of Athkatla."

The bound man tensed, reddened, sputtered, caught himself in time and managed to say absolutely nothing.

"And we have the acorns of the oaks of some dryads who were captured here?" Imoen turned to the fairy, still silent with her mesmerising violet eyes in her flawless face. "They asked us to bring them here…"

The ageless woman moved slightly, finally ceasing to resemble a statue. "Ulene, Cania and Elyme have been trapped for many years. Their trees must be replanted so that they can live free again… Give me the acorns, sister," she said, with a light accent and in a voice which sounded like the whisper of wind in leaves.

Imoen would have clenched her fists at the condescension, but for that she was already searching for the acorns. She found them; they seemed far lighter than they should be.

"These acorns are empty," the leaves whispered; a single, perfect tear rolled down the dryad's left cheek. "They are dead! My sisters are dead!"

Imoen frowned. "Dead? But— How?" She sought with her eyes for her brother; in his own manner, he seemed as alarmed as she was. There was really no reason why the dryads shouldn't have survived the explosion on Waukeen's Promenade.

Before her, the fairy was ululating, crying an elegant rain of crystalline tears. "Oh, my sisters! My fair sisters! I could not protect you, and now, you will never feel the zephyr in your hair…"

"Weep not, my lovely queen!" Coran said, taking the dryad's charming hand and kissing it lightly; by Imoen's side, her prisoner spoke up shyly, "My lady! You are in such sorrow… Cannot this knight do anything to brighten your day?"

Imoen found herself agreeing wholeheartedly with this sympathetic pity. Reminiscing, filled with unspoken longing, she sighed, "They were so beautiful… When I was little, I would often dream of dryads and their beautiful trees…"

Sarevok opened his mouth, no doubt to voice his own anguished condolence; but at that moment, Altair settled—not on his forearm, but on his shoulder. The eagle's talons thrust deeply into the unprotected flesh, drawing blood, and instead of sharing in the high elegy of their mourning, he, so terribly prosaically, hissed out in pain.

The horrible bird cried shrilly, further spoiling the tragic mood; worse yet, on her own shoulder, Imoen was dealing with a minuscule version of the same mutiny: Pangur's claws bit into her flesh, and his needle-like teeth sank into her ear.

**What'cha doin'? Ait'cha daft?**

"Ow! Stop it, Pangur!" she yelled, trying to shake off the cat; and then, as she finally realised what was happening, to the nymph, "Hey! You! Stop it! Grief's all fine, but stop spilling it out!"

The fairy looked at her through tear-filled eyes. "I cannot," she sniffed exquisitely. "My sisters…"

"—are dead. And should I find I utter anything as agonisingly maudlin as my sister, you will share their fate!"

At which, Imoen and her cat in unison snorted; Sarevok shot a betrayed look in his sister's direction; the siblings' captive, throwing himself in the taller man's direction and promptly being stopped by his bonds, yelled out, "How dare you threaten a lady in grief, Anchev?! Unfeeling swine!" and the elf, putting his hand on the hilt of his sword, unmoving from his spot, announced, "Imoen's brother or not, apologise lest I force you to swallow your words!"

Imoen took one final look at the two men and her brother, now eyeing them both with an expression frozen halfway between mirth and incredulity, as he would eye angry rabbits, mayhap; then, rolled her eyes, drew close to the fairy's delicate earlobe, and said pleasantly, "How about this? Stop, or my cat scratches your eyes out?"

The dryad blinked, and, still sobbing, whispered in the rustling of leaves, "Coran, my love, leave that brute alone. I am certain that it is not his fault that he does not comprehend the depth of my emotion. The way humans sometimes treat their seedlings—"

"I'll fireball your tree," Imoen hissed into the magnificent ear.

"—And, whatever his vice, this young human more than made up for this with his chivalrous defence of my mourning—"

Anomen Delryn blushed so deeply that he did not notice how Imoen smirked nastily, and whispered, "Why don't you give him a lock of your hair while you're at it?"

"—I hope, love, that you will not mind if I give him a lock of my hair to express my gratitude, won't you?"

"Of course I won't, my sweet queen," Coran replied, with such a sour look on his face that Imoen decided that, between it and the innocent ecstasy on Delryn's visage, it was almost sufficient payoff for the general embarrassment of this encounter.

She looked to Sarevok; he bowed lightly in appreciation of the finesse of her killing blow. Delryn might not know what the properties of a Nymph Cloak were, but he would certainly learn it once he returned to Athkatla.

Of course, if he insisted on saving crying nymphs, he was probably going to have need of it.

---

"My lady, I cannot describe how verily thankful I am for your most precious gift! I shall wear it—"

"For someone who does not know how to describe something, Delryn, you certainly do it in too many words," Sarevok commented calmly, cutting his prisoner's bonds and him short.

The dryad laughed, delightfully, in a voice like the tinkling of little silver bells; Coran, watching the scene philosophically, observed, "Alack, fickle is love, fickle the true female's heart—"

"How is Brielbara, Coran?" Imoen asked coldly. "And your daughter—what was her name?"

The elf shrugged. "I haven't seen them. You know as much as I do."

"Aren't you even curious?" the woman inquired; but already, the dryad—Vaelasa, as she had introduced herself—was looking back at them; and they would eat.

They were all sitting on the meadow, at the edge of the forest; and, since Sarevok, so charmingly that the gravity of his previous insult was promptly forgotten, offered to help the fairy cut a lock of her knee-long, dark green hair—Coran was, for the moment, left alone with Imoen.

Between one thing and other, they had been invited to dine with the pair; the roe deer had returned; her name was Llylla, and, as they ate, she ate from the dryad's hand, eyeing askew Pangur and Altair. "I thank you for healing her, sister," the fairy said, now again nothing but a dignified masterpiece of beauty; she had, apparently, chosen to neglect completely the whole previous incident. "I would have gone out to meet you before, but for that Coran and I met in the iridescent glade—"

Imoen blinked. "You did?"

"It must have been love at first sight," Sarevok added agreeably; the dryad, delightfully, blushed, and replied, in her light accent and a whisper of leaves, "It was. And now, we are joined together for a pleasant eternity of merriment!" She held Coran's hand tightly.

Imoen took one look at the elf's face, grinned widely, and said, "I'm happy for your eternal happiness, Coran." There was no telling if the tales of dryads charming humans and elves to keep them by themselves held any grain of truth; if they did, though, Vaelasa certainly seemed determined enough to try it. And Coran was not exactly what one might call monogamous—

"Aye," Anomen Delryn added at that moment. "It is always good to see two," a brief hesitation, "people, tie a perpetual bond! My congratulations, my lady!" He was, Imoen noticed, very carefully not looking anywhere apart from the minuscule, captivating freckles on Vaelasa's tanned face; and, once he stopped talking, equally carefully transferred his gaze to the ground.

She even found it charming, this boyish artlessness; but, as the fairy, again gracefully laughing in her silver-bell tinkling, thanked Delryn, she wondered how those shreds of—whatever they were: morning mist, spider-webs and stardust, for all she knew—stayed put. She would love to have the address of Vaelasa's tailor. Either to hire him or to throttle him.

Pangur, sated, climbed into Imoen's lap and demanded to be scratched; as she complied with the cat's request, she asked lightly, "Anyway… How come you found yourself in the Windspear Hills, Coran?"

The rogue smiled brightly. "Hunting wyverns, of course! There has been a sighting in this region. And, since these hills are remote enough to be a good breeding ground—"

The dryad draped on his arm frowned beatifically. "My love, there are no wyverns here."

Self-importantly, Coran said, "My fair queen… I must disagree. The description was rather accurate: a large, flying creature—"

The dryad smiled back sweetly. "That, my love, is not a wyvern. It is that horrible dragon. Firkraag."

There was the sound of a young squire choking on his food and drink.

---

Sarevok was the first to react; in two smooth moves, he was by Anomen Delryn, hitting him on the back, dislodging the piece of stuck food and growling lightly over his ear, "Take heed, Delryn. I would not that my sister were charged also with murder by fodder. It isn't even hers."

Imoen raised an eyebrow, smiled, and nudged the knight, who was still gasping for air; though now, quite indignantly so. "My gallant brother has just saved you from an unseemly death, you know," she said helpfully. "Won't you thank him for his noble feat, squire?"

The man gritted his teeth. "I owe that ill-bred beast no gratitude!"

"Ingrate," Imoen smiled.

"Ugly ingrate," Sarevok, amused, amended; and then, turning to Vaelasa and Coran, both watching the scene with casual disinterest, asked, "What kind of dragon?"

At that, Coran, too, animated. "Yes, my lovely queen," he added. "What is this dragon you are talking about?"

"Yes," Anomen Delryn's relieved, and thus haughty, voice reiterated, "Have I heard correctly, my lady? Have you just accused the fifth Baron Windspear of being a… dragon? These are serious allegations, not to be taken lightly!"

The fairy fluttered her long eyelashes. "I don't know what Jierdan Firkraag calls himself among humans. But yes, he is a dragon. A terrible red wyrm who takes delight in burning trees…"

A single tear appeared in the corner of each enchanting eye; Pangur stood up from Imoen's lap, yawned, stretched his front paws, crossed over to the dryad and started to rub his head against a well-rounded thigh; the nymph shot one look in his direction over the slightly upturned tip of her lovely little nose, and said, "Just now, he committed yet another blasphemy. Brought here a tribe of orcs from the north, just so that their sight despoil the beauty of the land…"

"Orcs?" Sarevok asked with interest, moving closer. "Do you know what clan?"

The fairy knitted her delicate eyebrows at him. "I don't," she replied proudly. "I don't take interest in orcs, as a matter of course."

"This may prove important when we go after Firkraag," the man replied simply, holding her gaze; over Coran's assurance of, "And you have every right to do so, my queen," and Delryn's cry of, "Leave the lady alone, Anchev!"

"Their chieftain is some brute called Dig Dag, I think," the nymph said, moving slightly away from Coran, picking Pangur up and starting to scratch him behind the ears. The cat purred; Traitor, Imoen thought at him, amused. **Ya wouldn' say so if y— Ooh, **the cat replied, and fell silent.

"Firkraag rules over both the orcs and the werewolves," the fairy spoke on, thoughtfully. "He likes pitting them against each other, I think."

"The werewolves?" Sarevok inquired, drawing ever so slightly closer to her.

"Lanfear's people," the nymph replied. "They have lived here for years. They love hunting deer. And humans, too," she added, with a violet flicker of a look from under the long lashes.

The man smiled. "Where do they live, Vaelasa?"

"In the old burial chambers—" To the inquiring look, she replied, apologetically, "To the northeast. I don't know much about them. Humans used to bury their kings here, once, and now, the orcs and the werewolves live there… Firkraag's own lair is somewhere there, too. This is all I know. Are you going to kill him?" she asked curiously.

"Of course," Sarevok replied, before adding smoothly, "I know that yours is a peaceful folk, but perhaps you would that Coran joined us?" He cast an amused look in the elf's direction.

The fairy frowned again, as though only now remembering the man in whose lap she was sitting; he, on his part, said, quickly, "My queen—"

Vaelasa put Pangur away, turned to her company, and said, "Why not, really? I'm sure, my love, that you could help this human… Sarevok," she added, looking back at the so named.

"We would do with any help you can provide, elf," Imoen heard her captive's fractious voice. "'Tis a lady's honour that is at stake in this endeavour!" So, I have been advanced to the rank of a lady, she smiled. I wonder if the squire will ever think to apologise.

Coran, meanwhile, thusly pressed upon from two directions at once, pled, "My dear, I have never fought a dragon. They are powerful foes—"

"Yes, but neither am I asking you to kill that dragon single-handedly, my love," Vaelasa said firmly. "And you heard the human: it is a matter of a lady's honour. And if this is not enough, think of me, my dear. If that dragon burns my tree, I will perish and die!"

"He has failed to do so yet, my queen," Coran argued; from the look which dawned on the beautiful face, it was not the happiest argument.

"Then I mean so little to you?!" Vaelasa asked, starting to her feet. "Yes, I do, I know this! Don't think I haven't noticed the looks you have been giving her!" she yelled out, pointing at Imoen. "And don't think I don't know about that other human, either!"

Then, the fairy shook her gorgeous mane of dark green curls, and said imperiously, "In fact… Now that I think of it… We are through."

At which point, two mouths, in unison, opened: the first, Imoen's captive's, watching the whole commotion with the pure terror of a creature accustomed to seeking order in the world, yet suddenly, without any prior warning, exposed to the wild tempers of the fairy folk— The second was Coran's own. "Through?" he stammered out, disconsolately.

"Yes!" the nymph said, in a voice now much more like a gale than a whisper of leaves. "Through! You!" she turned to Sarevok, who was watching the chaos he had sown in his footsteps without the slightest trace of compassion in his amused eyes. "Thank you for showing me what a worthless rascal that elf," she cast a smouldering violet look back in Coran's direction, "is! The forest," a much calmer look, back at the Bhaalspawn, "will always welcome you. You," again a scorching gaze, towards the elf, "not!"

And with that, the irate fairy left for the forest, roe deer in tow.

---

Left alone on the battleground, sorely defeated, Coran sighed deeply. "It was too good to be true, anyway… Well," he added, rising to his feet, "It is time to search for Safana, I think!"

"Safana being… that other human Vaelasa spoke of?" Imoen asked tentatively.

"Yes," Coran sighed. "My beloved Safana! We came here together to hunt wyverns… We found none, though. Of course, if they are not here, that would explain it," he added brightly.

"So, where is she now?" Imoen probed carefully.

"By the looks of it, some werewolves caught her," the elf said blithely, oblivious to the two identical expressions cast his way; Imoen's brother, now employed by her cat into scratching his belly, did not look up from the ground.

"Have I understood you correctly, elf?!" the siblings' captive demanded in their stead. "Your lady has been caught by werewolves, and, instead of saving her, you are here—" He sputtered, clearly unable to find the correct word.

"Dallying," Imoen supplied. Yes: this was, unfortunately, the Coran she remembered.

"Frolicking," Sarevok murmured under his breath, still without looking up from Pangur. Altair had landed next to him in the grass, and was cooing lightly as she was walking nervously around the man and the cat.

"Cavorting," Imoen, narrowing her eyes, upped the stakes.

"Gambolling," Sarevok dealt the coup de grâce, casting a smug glimmer of a look in his sister's direction.

The squire of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart looked from his one captor to the other, and finished, crossly, "—yes, that? Elf?"

Coran shrugged. "I was just going for help to the nearby humans when I met Vaelasa on the way… Haven't you seen her?" he asked forlornly; and then, sighing in reminiscence, added, "Her breasts alone—"

"Her brains alone sufficed to make her leave you, elf," Sarevok commented, smiling cheerfully as he put Pangur next to Altair's armoured talon; the cat's nose met with the eagle's beak as the two familiars inspected each other point-blank. Then, the eagle's owner rose to his feet, yawned, stretched himself and said, "Sister? When we kill your dragon, I'm taking the scales."

Imoen watched as the two other men, the elf and the human, executed the complex mental arithmetic required to suspect that, perhaps, the fairy's fury had not been entirely a matter of impulse. Sarevok must be getting bored away from Athkatla's webs of intrigue, she thought, if he turned to such simple pastimes as these.

She looked away from the two fuming men, and said, "Can we talk for a moment, little brother? Alone?"


	23. IV: Knights' Attack, 4

_Wherein I make copious use of arabellaesque's files - gratias maximas tibi ago, amica optima!_

**---**

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**4**

"Delryn!"

"Yes?!" the annoyed voice of Anomen Delryn yelled; at which, the face of his captor beamed. "No more noble suffering in silence?" Sarevok Anchev asked with a light trace of amusement in his voice. "And it took just one dryad to untie your tongue…"

"Now," he said before the other man had a chance to respond, "the question is if it was also enough to make you listen. I did listen. I heard you acknowledge my sister's innocence, Delryn. Do you believe in it?"

"Yes, you murderous swine," the fuming squire replied, "I do believe that the Lady Imoen was implicated in your sin only through an evil wyrm's most foul play!"

"Good," his interlocutor growled. "Swear on your honour as a nobleman and a squire of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart that you will do all within your powers to clear her name."

The other man recoiled. "What?! I shall give no word of mine to a baseborn outlaw!"

"Then give it to my sister," the Son of Murder replied. "If you refuse, I will tie you again."

**---**

So, I now have my own knight in shining armour, the sister in question smiled as she graciously accepted the fumbling oath Anomen produced; for a moment, she wondered if she should, perhaps, give the squire a lock of her hair. But he already had a lock of Vaelasa's, now tied around his right forearm, his shield arm's forearm; and that would serve him much better in the future to come— If he survived the encounter with Sarevok, her, and a dragon, that is.

If he did, he would have so many exploits to boast about later, she thought, amused: saving maidens. Avenging his master's death. Slaying a dragon. Perhaps the paladins would even knight him for his mighty feats?

And, now, apparently, Sarevok and she would not even have to drag him all the way to his fame.

**---**

Coran was not the kind to swear oaths; it had taken a bit of work to convince him to save the life of his daughter.

It had not been all bad, Imoen decided; it could not have been, otherwise it would not have lasted so long as it had, even over Jaheira's all objections— _You have Khalid, Kivan has Deheriana, and Irene spends half the time we're not fighting learning magic with Xan!_ she remembered through the mist of her memory; _Very well, child. But when he breaks your heart, you know where to find me._ She did; and when, after they saved Brielbara's child, Coran took one look at her face, then at Jaheira's face, and then, at everyone else's faces, and loudly announced that he was not going to listen to a third tongue-lashing in one day, and that he was leaving the company and the city anon, Jaheira did— something. What that was, Imoen could not exactly remember. But the world wasn't bad afterwards.

But it had not been all bad; and she had certainly learnt many thieving tricks from him.

Now, he was looking at her, completely unconcerned by the little scene unrolling between Sarevok and Anomen: they were men. They mattered little to him. She wondered whether little enough that he had not even recognised Sarevok's name; and, if he had, if he understood what it meant that she was Sarevok's sister; and, if he did, what— No. She already knew what his reaction in such case would be. After all, great peril yielded great beauty; and life was either adventure or nothing; and luck was, always, with the romantics.

"Stay here," she told the elf, "with— Can I call you Anomen?" she asked, turning to the squire.

"Aye, my lady," replied he, blushing lightly. "Please do!"

"With Anomen, then," she finished, looking back at the elf. "We will help you, but, first, I have to speak to my brother."

Sarevok was already reaching to Grasshopper's saddlebags. "Do you favour the sword or the staff, Delryn?"

The squire blinked, nonplussed. "What's it to you, Anchev?"

"A simple one-word answer would suffice, Delryn," Sarevok replied dryly. "For your information, since, apparently, your knightly education did not involve fighting werewolves. They require enchanted weapons to be permanently dealt with. Your mace is not enchanted."

Behind his back, Imoen sighed. This was said by the man who, not a sen'night ago, had wrestled with a werewolf; in fact, she would bet that it had been on that occasion that he had learnt this precious nugget of information he was now boasting about.

"In that case, the sword!" Anomen replied, a bit too suddenly for Imoen's tastes; but Sarevok was already removing the Burning Earth, Dalok's flame tongue, from their bags of holding, and saying, "In that case, feel free not to destroy it. Stay here, and guard the property," he said, casting an extremely pointed look at the elven thief. 

That was when Imoen noticed Pangur and Altair's absence.

**---**

"Elves have good hearing," Sarevok noted.

"Enough," Imoen replied, halting. They were almost at the edge of the meadow again, back where it turned into nothing but thorny weeds growing in the cracks of the sandstone floor.

"We will help the elf," her brother said noncommittally.

"We will help the woman. We are going that way," Imoen replied. "And those are Firkraag's werewolves. But I want Coran out of my life as soon as possible, little brother."

"I see," Sarevok replied, appraising her intent with a look and a gaze. "Shall I kill him?"

Imoen glared at him with cold, purposeful fury. "You are my brother, not a hired thug, and don't you ever dare forget that, Sarevok." She grimaced. "But I must ask you one thing, little brother. When we find that Safana, whoever she is, I will tell Coran and her to leave. Don't argue with me then."

Sarevok cocked his head. "The elf hurt you that much?"

The question was, thankfully, asked dryly, without emotion; and so, Imoen smiled. "You hurt me more, little brother. It's not that. I don't care for what he did, anymore. I simply don't want him in my life. Not even as future dragon fodder, or whatever it is you were planning to use him for."

Sarevok drummed his fingers. "I see," he repeated, folding his arms and looking at the ground; and then, with a sudden, almost furtive, look, back at his sister. "You do realise that this means that, instead of in five, we will be fighting a red dragon in three."

"You didn't know that we would be fighting in five, brother."

"I didn't know that we would be fighting a red dragon, either," Sarevok laughed. "I have, at most, spirit armour. Delryn has splint mail. Perhaps we should return to Trademeet."

Imoen eyed the lengthening shadows, and said, "Let's try to find that woman first."

**---**

**The chick likes me!**

Imoen blinked. Pangur was… If a cat could be bouncing, he was.

You know… I have no idea whether you want to eat her or make love to her, she told the cat as, with a thanks and a smile, she picked Deneb's reins from Anomen. The knight and Coran were pointedly not looking at each other.

For that matter, how do you know? she added. It's not like you can talk to each other, or anything.

**Can see it in her eyes! The way she looks at me! She wants me!**

She wants to eat you, she thought as she put the cat on Deneb's back. She decided to walk for a bit; between Coran and Anomen, they would be moving at a walking pace, anyway.

They would have to backtrack at least half a league, because it had been in that area, Coran was saying, that Safana and he had been when they had separated. Sarevok released Altair to search for the way further northeast through the labyrinth of rock and water; Pangur's tail was lashing left and right as he followed intently the bird's disappearing silhouette. He let out a short, unselfconscious meow which sounded very much like a dog's bark, before replying, **Nope. She wants me. Me as in me. She's jus' real' shy, y'know?**

Shy? Imoen laughed. Pangur, she's a twenty-pound man-killing eagle. How can she possibly be shy?

**That's why**, the cat replied, and stubbornly refused to say where he and Altair had disappeared before.

Imoen, lost between Coran and Anomen Delryn, courteously allowed the latter to speak of his exploits as Keldorn Firecam's squire during the campaign against the Hillgnasher Giants.

**---**

"Once we found Shandalar's cloak, its magic took us back to Ulgoth's Beard. And that's how I met Safana!" Coran finished merrily.

"What a load of lies, knave," Anomen snorted contemptuously. "An island which traps overconfident wizards?! Crafted by the gods themselves? Ridiculous, I say! The Order—"

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Delryn, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," the voice of Imoen's brother replied cheerfully. Sarevok, who had gone forth to scout, had returned; dismounting swiftly and taking Grasshopper by the reins, he added, "We have reached our destination, I believe."

Ten minutes later, they all stood at the entrance to the gorge: two high walls of almost bare stone, with just enough place at the bottom for a trickle of a stream and a few shrubs and weeds; and even, occasionally, a tree. There were cracks in the sandstone sides of the canyon: cracks which must lead to the caves where, once, humans used to bury their kings, and where the werewolves, the orcs and Firkraag himself now lived. A deep shadow lay over the bottom of the gorge: an hour or two still remained till sunset, but here, it was already dark.

"Those two caves, side by side, nearby," Sarevok said, pointing them out: they were in the western, shaded wall of the canyon, across the shallow stream; but, because the valley took a large turn, they were almost squarely in front of the party. "Others are much deeper into the gorge. Tufts of fur on shrubs here, fewer further on. No werewolves in sight there."

"How convenient," Imoen said. "Coran?"

The elf beamed, and asked, "What do you bid, little sweetheart?"

Imoen ignored the attempt to annoy her, as well as Anomen's indignant cry, and asked, "Which one do you pick?"

"I would never pick a thing over you, little sweetheart!" Coran replied; to which, Imoen said, "All right. Take the one on the right, I take the left," and, not looking back, went forth, alone, to the accompaniment of a squire's wrath and a brother's complete lack of response to it.

The cave was damp and cool; and was very much a cave, and not a burial chamber, inhabited or otherwise. There was a length of a stony corridor leading down, the kind of which did not permit at all to see whether it was frequented or not; and, at the dead end of it, a wider chamber with water gathering in a niche. It was empty.

Empty; but there was an odd mist hanging in the darkness, over the pool of water. As Imoen eyed it, she had the eerie impression that the mist was thickening, coalescing into ghost-like shapes— Never one to take intuition lightly, she did not wait to see into what kind of monster it would turn, but started to backtrack from the cave. The werewolves were not here. It was enough. They may investigate the rest later, together.

Halfway upwards, she heard the first sounds of the fight.

She crouched in the entrance to the cave, trying to take in the battlefield; for, in the brief spell of time which had passed since she had gone into the cave, the peaceful canyon had turned precisely into—this: a sea of rolling, barking fur surrounded Sarevok and Anomen on all sides. Wolves and werewolves, a whole pack of them: Coran must have slipped up, somewhere, and those two had had to come to help him.

The two men were standing back to back; the former was wearing the rest of his stone skins, fighting; the latter's splint mail was shimmering in the shadow with the armour of his faith as he prayed for some divine boon.

Coran was standing far on the other side of the shallow stream, picking carefully at the werewolves at the fringe of the fight with his piercing arrows; as Imoen watched, one such hit a wolf nearby her in the throat: it died with a gargling sound. Altair, too, was furiously screeching as—

A voice to the left, just next to her, "No, don't! I'm telling you! He is the one Bodhi wanted! The other one can't be far away, either!"

Imoen peeked out behind the corner of the cave. Two men and two women were standing not a few steps from her. The woman who had just spoken was standing with her front to her: her mouth was still open, her head was lightly inclined; and, judging from the sparks in her shrill, brown eyes, she was very definitely annoyed.

Imoen eyed her up and down; found no obvious weapons; reached for her scroll case; the darkness behind her started to feel much colder; a raspy voice next to her ordered sharply, "Grancor! Falik! At them!"

The men were gone; in their place, two giant beasts, one grey, the other black, leapt into the fray before. As Imoen found what she had sought, the raspy voice next to her yelled at the other woman, "I don't care about what any Bodhi wanted! You promised to me that Coran would come. Where is he?! Where is my love?! Where is my Coran?!"

In the background, a massive rain of pure brilliance pierced the shadow of the gorge, falling from the sky on top of the werewolves' and the fighters' heads; on the other side, in the darkness of the cave, something moved; Imoen paid heed to neither. The spell—

"You self-serving, lying wench!" the raspy voice roared out. "Die!"

The shimmering globe of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere enveloped Safana just in time to make her immune to the blow of the giant werewolf; Lanfear, disoriented, looked around for the caster; but Imoen was now invisible, and no more in the entrance of the cave. In her place there stood four vague shapes born of white and crimson mist.

Tendrils of life-draining coldness stroked the werewolf, lovingly.

**---**

A bit of poison on the tip of a dagger; mirror images to protect self once she became visible; hasting self with Arbane's sword; jamming the dagger into one of the greatest werewolf's backs, to help Sarevok, fighting him up front; running, still hasted, to where Coran stood; casting what little there remained in the memory of offensive spells, those magic missiles and the chromatic orbs, and whatnot; the bow—

Anomen Delryn did not know how to fight with the sword. It was blindingly obvious. He waved around the fire-shrouded sword in a multitude of small, nervous, unnecessary moves; he forced Sarevok to avoid him, or step around the edge and the heat which followed the edge; he fought no better than a barely taught novice; or Imoen. Who could fight well with a sword, for a thief. For a thief, not one who made fighting his profession.

It might be the Burning Earth's oddly balanced grip, which strained the unaccustomed hand just the slightest bit too much to be truly an efficient weapon; or it might be something else, Anomen's own predilection and preference for clubs and maces. But the result was one: both Sarevok and the squire were now bleeding from so many wounds that it was a blessing that, once the mist creatures finished with Lanfear, they turned first on the nearest living creatures: the remaining werewolves.

"Fall back, Delryn!" Sarevok bid curtly once they, too, were dead and the mist's attention turned to the two men. Anomen hesitated, and, readying his sword and shield once more, stayed.

"Fire arrows, little sweetheart?" Coran asked brightly.

"Enchanted," Imoen replied, eyeing the mist. Was it even possible to kill something like this? With arrows? Wouldn't they pass through?

"So am I," the elf intimated; Imoen, adamantly, paid no attention. Sarevok slashed at the sole crimson creature, and was rewarded by a shriek of agony. So, the mist could be hurt; the mist could be killed.

Anomen jabbed wildly in the direction of one of the two beings attacking him, leaving himself, and Sarevok's back, clearly in the open; pale wisps reached, and enveloped both men—

**---**

"We will talk later, you hideous cretin," Sarevok growled at the ashen-faced, trembling man sitting on the ground with bowed head: Anomen looked as if his colour had been drained from him; as if he almost deserved the insult. "First. Do you know how to restore yourself?"

"I… forgot," the man said, looking up, wide-eyed, without the slightest trace of his customary bluster. "I forgot how to pray properly… I knew how to do it, once, but I forgot…" He was as shaken by this sudden realisation as by his physical predicament: his fingers clutched the sheath of the Burning Earth so tightly that their knuckles were white.

"Sister," his questioner said, coldly, not taking his eyes off the squire.

"Here, brother," Imoen replied, pulling out one of the very few scrolls remaining in her tube with a sigh: it turned out that the day had contained an unusual amount of magic practice. Although this one scroll, in particular, they had never intended to practice upon. They had only decided that forearmed was forearmed, and that, if Waukeen's temple in Trademeet sold blessed scrolls which allowed one to restore one's drained energy, only a fool would not make a stock of them.

"Here, Delryn," Sarevok repeated, smoothly bowing, unclenching the shaking man's hands from the sword, putting the scroll into them, and straightening himself. "Heal yourself. There is no reason to waste my words on you until you are lucid. Now, you," he turned to the tall, voluptuous brunette leaning against Coran with a lopsided, roguish grin.

"Safana," the woman said, in a voice of velvet and honey. "And may I just say what extraordinary pleasure it is to meet such a… giant… man like you?"

Imoen decided that, perish the thought as she may, she had just met Coran's female twin, if not his doppelganger. Even the way the woman's eyes wandered around Sarevok's body as she spoke was twin to Coran's own.

"The pleasure is all yours, Safana," Sarevok replied dryly. "You were not bound."

"What she was was hired by Bodhi to find us," Imoen said softly. "Coran?"

"Bodhi?" The elf seemed genuinely perplexed. "No," he shook his head. "I once knew a Bodhi, but that was in Suldanessellar— What a magnificent woman that was," he sighed dreamily. "Very… forward."

Imoen rolled her eyes. Safana was a good model of the sort of forwardness Coran had in mind. "This Bodhi is a— What's on with her?"

Safana was shaking, trembling, quivering in a sudden fit; clearly asphyxiating, grasping for air, she reached to her throat. Coran's hand, wrapped loosely around her waist, tightened to support her; Imoen reached to her own belt. A green bottle; a simple antidote to most poisons—

She poured the liquid into the half-open, froth-covered mouth; in the corner of her eye, she could see Anomen, now again lively, and not ashen-faced, quickly get to his feet and start upon a prayer.

He did not finish it: there was no need for it, anymore. One more spasm; the woman's eyes rolled; and Safana was dead.

**---**

The limp body drooped from Coran's arm; the elf stood, dumbstruck, uncomprehending.

Then, slowly, he put the body on the ground, sat next to it, and asked it, "Safana?"

Then, he demanded, "Safana? Sweet, honey, Safana— She's dead," he said slowly, with disbelief. "She's dead. We've barely had the time to get to know each other, and now, she's dead… She had the most beautiful—"

"Yes, she is dead, elf," Sarevok interrupted, irritated; eyeing the battleground, with its some twenty human and lupine corpses scattered around them. The day had been good for killing, Imoen thought as she followed her brother's gaze; perhaps following also her brother's thoughts. "This does not imply that we have to hear about her physical attributes. I would rather know what killed her."

"Aye," Anomen added suddenly. "Your," a brief pause: it was obvious that the next word had some difficulty in leaving the squire's mouth, "lady died a most painful and unusual death. I fear she was slain. It behoves thee to bring her murderer to justice!" He cast a look in Sarevok's direction.

"It might be Lanfear's revenge," Imoen vouched, unconvinced. "It seems she was another of your old flames, Coran, and she caught Safana to bait you. She might have wanted to make sure that, if she couldn't have you, neither would Safana. Lanfear's the one lying there, by the caves, by the way."

The elf on the ground took one look at the greyish fur of the giant werewolf and, wide-eyed, shuddered. "That is a she?"

"I don't think she looked like this when she met you," Imoen supplied. Then, she reconsidered, and added, "Although, on the other hand, a wolf has, I think, five pairs of—"

"No!" Coran cried out. "I don't want to hear it!" He paled. "The hair! The—hair! You are a cruel, cruel woman, little sweetheart, for even implying that I would—" He shuddered again. "Dragons, werewolves, and now this— This adventure has gotten out of hand. I'm calling it quits." Briskly, he stood up to his feet, and started to pick up his bow and quiver from the ground.

Sarevok smiled. "What of Safana, elf?"

Coran shrugged. "I loved her. But that was in another country. And, besides," he added, looking warmly at the body spread on the ground, "the wench is dead."

A clamp-like hand landed on Anomen Delryn's shoulder. "Stay, squire," Sarevok said coolly, without bothering to look at the young man. Then, turning to Imoen, he said, "Why don't you go with the elf, little sister? Fetch the horses. Your cat should be guarding them where we left them."

**---**

Pangur was, indeed, guarding the horses, which were exactly where Imoen had last seen them. He yawned at her.

"Adieu, little sweetheart!" Coran said as the woman picked up the horses' reins. "I'm really sorry that it didn't turn out as it might," he continued sadly, "You deserved the chance to rekindle our passion! Alack, the company you keep— I never particularly liked the concept of the elder brother," he added pensively, before finishing, merrily, "But, perhaps, one day, we will meet again, without any overgrown obstacles in our path!"

Imoen laughed. If there were one thing one must like about the thief, it was his overbearing, callous optimism. "Where will you go now, Coran?"

The elf smiled. "Wherever fate takes me, of course! Athkatla, I think. I've heard that there are plenty of bored, beautiful women there!"

"I'm sure there are," Imoen smiled back; though she did not add, Lady Maria Firecam, for one thing.

Then, for a moment, the elf hovered, undecided; until Imoen took him out of his misery. The kiss was brief and chaste—and then, Coran left her life again, heading, whistling; not looking back—never looking back—into the sunset.

**---**

Later, Imoen often wondered what would have happened if, on that particular evening, she had not forgotten that, whatever self-imposed proviso made her brother treat her as his fellow, it certainly did not stretch over to the whole of humanity.

She was walking slowly back through the valley of shadow, with the cat before her, and the eagle above her, and the horses' reins in her hands. Sarevok and Anomen will probably hide the bodies in the mist cave, she was thinking, the other will smell of the wolves, but it will be larger, so we'll stay there. Now, how to make Grasshopper and Deneb enter—

Her brother's voice was furious. "Immature cretin! Did you imagine you would deceive me?! That I, Sarevok, would stay blind to your incompetence?! I?! Four knights issued against me, and yet you would fool me with a neophyte's skill?!"

Sarevok was speaking so loudly, even Imoen, outside the cave, could hear him. She hastened her pace.

"No. Had you thought, this would prove you had brains at all. And you defied me. _Me_. _My_ direct command— Are your Order's standards so low that they accept any insubordinate scum into their ranks?!"

This time, Imoen heard the equally furious reply. "You are not my master, Anchev, and I am not bound to obey you! I knew what I faced—"

"So did I, fool," she heard as she descended the steps: this cave was a burial chamber. "Why else should I order you to fall back?! You disobeyed me, and barely escaped with your pitiful existence. You bring shame on your master's memory, Delryn!"

"So speaks the beast which murdered him!" Anomen Delryn, standing in the middle of the oblong chamber filled with bedrolls, hay and dry leaves, hissed out viciously in the red, dim light of the fire.

"You," Sarevok said, unfolding his arms and starting towards the squire, slowly, purposefully, as he spoke, "are pledged to my sister, knight. You are avowed, Delryn, and do not dare think that I will not exact that vow. Your will," he growled as he drew close to the other man and as Anomen, wild-eyed, started to back off before him, "is irrelevant. You must survive long enough to testify. If need be, you will hear Firkraag's confession and witness his death enclosed in a sanctuary of your own making."

"You, knight—you, Helmite—are under oath," Sarevok repeated as the other man encountered the chamber's far wall; and, as if hypnotised by the speaker's wildly burning eyes, halted there, thinking to move neither left nor right. "And you, you _imbecile—_" the speaker, all of a sudden, roared out; snake-like swift, a fist shot out and pummelled into Anomen's face and him into the wall.

Sarevok bent; grabbed the copiously bleeding man from the floor by the throat; heaved him, now puppet-like, to his own level; started to yell, deafeningly loud, straight into his face, "—_You_ almost _forfeited_ your oath merrily letting yourself be bled dry of life, fighting with a weapon you barely know how to fight, all the while disobeying a direct command— If you die, Delryn," he rolled on, tightening his grasp, oblivious to the strangling man's weak attempts to free himself, "who will clear my sister's name?!"

"Good point," Imoen said weakly.

She felt as if she had been whacked over the head.

At the sound of her voice, her brother turned his head towards her, quickly, intently, as he always did when he sought another enemy in a fight. For a moment, he only looked at her wildly, as if he did not recognise her at all; in his grasp, Anomen still thrashed about, beating ineffectually at the tightened fist—

Then, Sarevok blinked, shook his head, opened his hand, slowly, weakly, hesitantly—and, finally, started, in a rush and a hurry, passing her on the way outside.


	24. IV: Knights' Attack, 5

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**5**

Imoen darted to the body lying on the dank, filthy floor. Anomen still lived; with his windpipe almost crushed, he would not live long.

She healed him with her powers: this much, and that little; and then, mixed a sleeping potion from a bit of powder and the water in her water bag. "Shh," she told the man, who, still in shock and pain after what happened to him, did not yet know that he was already restored to health. "Drink this. It will help you heal."

The potion worked almost instantly; as quickly as she managed, she took off the man's splint mail, moved the sleeping body onto the closest bedroll, and covered it with the least soiled bedcover she found.

Now, the time was to face the more difficult part.

---

Sarevok was outside, sitting in the night's darkness with his head against the rocky wall and Pangur and Altair sleeping, back to back, by his side. "How is he?" he asked blandly, without opening his eyes.

"Alive," Imoen replied, setting the two bottles and the two cups between them, and spreading a bit of cloth to sit on it: the rock was getting cold fast. "Asleep. Won't wake up until morning."

"Fool," the man replied with audible relief. Then, he laughed, once, without great malice, "Ugly fool."

Imoen smirked. "I'm sorry, brother… Was that still about him? You're all covered in blood, you know. And it doesn't look like it's all his, either."

"Some of it is the werewolves'," her brother agreed easily.

"The part that looks like it's still flowing, too? Open your eyes, I need to see."

"Sister," the man said, with some slight reproach; to which, the sister replied, "You won't? Fine."

Pangur? she thought, How do I see—? Oh.

The world became less dark, and more grey; and the perspective changed. She was much lower now, for one thing; she looked up—

Sarevok opened his eyes; and, for a moment, before Pangur's eyes accommodated to the light, she was nearly blinded. The tales were, after all, true: cats had much more sensitive eyesight than humans.

"So, I was right," she said, returning to her own eyes with a thought, and feigning triumph: her brother's face looked almost as bad as Anomen's. "Here," she said, nudging his free hand with a bottle. "Healing. Then, wine. Tell me again why I should stay with you, brother. I don't recall ever giving you the right to defend me."

Sarevok sipped the healing potion slowly. "We are at arms against a common foe, sister; that is right enough," he replied at last; then, flatly, "And you have no choice. Foolish bravado in the face of overwhelming odds is Delryn's specialty."

"And pragmatism is always a sought-after trait," Imoen countered amiably, pouring the wine into the cups. "Which part of it made you treat Anomen as your punching bag, brother?"

"That cretin—" Sarevok started; and then, with a scowl, said, "He won't be reasonable. He won't obey me. How am I to protect him if he won't obey a simple order?"

The wine was old, dry and made Imoen's mouth water with its smell. "So, that's it," she said, tasting it unhurriedly. "He's an irresponsible idiot, so you're responsible for him? That's what irritates you?" She smirked, and, for good measure, prodded, "Not that he called a god's son, baseborn?"

Sarevok took a long, firm swig from his own cup, and announced his verdict. "Anomen Delryn, sister, is an infantile, unreliable braggart who believes we wouldn't let him fight a dragon unless he impressed us with at least one foolish act in an hour."

Beside him, Imoen's smirk turned into an open grin. "He smote you," she announced delightfully. "That's what that rain of light was, wasn't it? Helm's holy power, falling right on top of my divine brother's head… Must have been a nasty surprise."

Her tired divine brother closed his eyes again, for a moment, as he massaged his scalp and shook his head lightly. "That, sister, was one of his better decisions. It worked. But I let him prove what he was worth, and instead—"

"Have you ever fought a dragon, brother?"

"—he disobeyed an express order. That vampire mist drained him nearly to death. No, sister. Never."

Imoen smiled. "Vampire mist. So that's what it was. How old are you, brother?"

They both watched each other for a moment, in silence, askew, drinking wine; before the brother asked, almost offhandedly, "How old do you think I am, sister?"

"I think," the sister replied, amused, "that if Anomen Delryn ever learnt your age, he would completely refuse to follow you. And you're going to make him listen to you tomorrow, are you not? That poor, poor creature…"

That cheered the man up, visibly. "He will, sister," he replied, pleasantly, smiling, with that smile promising Anomen Delryn an eternity of torture and humiliation, "have the unique opportunity of squiring a nascent god."

Imoen, happy, snorted. "A baseborn outlaw, brother."

"It will postpone our plans a day," Sarevok said, serious again. "But we simply cannot go at Firkraag as we are. You must learn to protect yourself from fire. I must train Delryn— Damn," he cursed, sincerely. "I would much rather have Firecam here than that fool. There would have been far less screaming, I believe, despite that one being a full knight— Still, there is no use crying over spilt blood. Here, sister," he said, unclasping something from his neck and proffering it to Imoen.

The woman took it curiously. The golden amulet looked simple enough: there were barely some faded etchings in it, and certainly nothing she would recognise. But the raw power it radiated— "What is it, brother?"

"For the past five minutes, fair sibling, you have been wondering how I made myself immune to the mist's powers. Aran gave it to me when we realised that Bodhi was a vampire."

"He did," Imoen replied, putting away her cup, and examining the clasp and the pendant of the amulet in detail in the light she had decided, after all, to conjure. "How very provident of him. I still don't like him. He beat you up just to say hello."

"After that elf, sister," her brother retorted cheerfully, taking in passing a long, deep swig from his cup, "I refuse to take your advice on men."

"Damn," Imoen smiled, returning the golden necklace and pouring more wine for them both. "And here I almost managed to forget about Coran. What do you think happened to his friend, by the way?"

"Geas," Sarevok said with a deep, private scowl; Imoen narrowed her eyes and agreed, "It was Bodhi who killed the dryads."

"She sent the woman here after we left Athkatla," her brother countered in the much happier voice of the obvious challenge; and so, answering to it, she said, "But she wanted to make sure Safana would not double-cross her and tell us the rest of the plan if we found her out."

Sarevok smiled, and finished, "The question is what the rest of the plan was."

Imoen grimaced. "To alert Firkraag? If he knows Irenicus, he might know Bodhi, too… But Firkraag knew we were here before Safana did. And she wouldn't have tried to hire werewolves if she could contact a dragon. And Firkraag, it seems, has his own plans… Brother, we are hopeless," she sighed. "We let ourselves be seen by not one, but two people in—what? Four hours?"

"Five, I believe," her brother smirked, toasting to her. "The workout was fine, sister," he added matter-of-factly, drinking up the rest of his wine.

"Yes," Imoen laughed, finishing her own. "It paid off. Although the Windspear Hills are not exactly what one might call… uninhabited."

"No," her brother agreed. "They aren't. I would go speak with the orcs tomorrow, sister," he added, casually, and Imoen, who was halfway to getting up already, sat back with utter disbelief.

"You want to go meet the orcs, brother," she repeated, slowly. "Won't they want to kill you?"

The man shrugged. "They might. Then, I would kill two or three of them, and the rest would talk. However, I don't believe this will be required. I know these particular orcs. If they are Dig Dag's, then they are the Stuck in Craw; Tazok's people—and Mulahey's, if you remember Mulahey, sister," he replied to the incredulous look, before adding, shrugging again, "They may know something about what is happening here. And, frankly, I would not have a clan of orcs attack my back as I attacked a dragon in front."

Imoen blinked, searched for arguments better than the one which jumped at her the moment she heard Sarevok's claim: But they are orcs, brother! Orcs! Why don't we just—and said, "Yes, brother, but… They work for Firkraag now. If you knew them once, that's good, I guess, but are you really sure it will be enough to stop them from attacking you?"

"So I believe," her brother replied graciously; before adding, "However, sister. Someone must protect the Helmite in my absence—"

A grimace. "I wasn't planning on accompanying you, brother. Not to an orc clan."

"I did not think you would be," Sarevok rejoined simply; before adding, slowly, "Still. I must have yet one more promise of you, little sister… When Delryn wakes, remain asleep."

"All right," Imoen, who had been rather expecting this particular plea, assented, smiling. "But don't expect me to clean up after you again, brother."

A half-smile crossed the man's face. "I won't, sister. Thank you."

After which, having said and told all there really was to tell and say, the siblings rose and departed the scene; leaving behind only a cat and an eagle, asleep, abreast, content.

---

The dreamscape was accommodating: it had been so for both past nights. Imoen had been walking it with Irene as her guide, sightseeing, marvelling at its many gruesome wonders.

Tonight, the sisters were sitting together on the Candlekeep ramparts. Pangur was also there: a spot of rose and grey against the venomously green, tormented sky.

"One tear fell for every murdered soul, and our Father collected them all…" Irene was saying softly. Beneath them, the sea of crystalline tears beat against the rock of Candlekeep.

"What's in the library, Irene?" Imoen asked suddenly. "The door won't open. Why can't I get inside the library?"

"I don't know," the dwarf replied; then, sadly, "I don't know, Imoen."

---

She awoke at an indeterminate hour, with Pangur stretched to his full length next to her on some werewolf's bedroll, in the darkness of the burial chamber of an ancient king: for the fire, untended, had gone out long before.

No man's breath pierced the reeking shadows; Sarevok and Anomen must have gone outside.

For a moment, she lay in the darkness, thinking.

There was no telling how much Sarevok Anchev knew of Anomen Delryn; certainly, not the amount of information he possessed about his master. There was no reason why he should have ever taken interest in an inconsequential squire. But after the night, the nagging feeling that she had herself once heard the name and the line subsided, paving way to simple fact: she had once seen documents mentioning a Moira Delryn, daughter of Cor. She had stolen them from the mansion of Saerk Farrahd, the man who had hired the girl's murderers.

---

Then, they were sparring, in the fabulous, brisk scent of wilderness; for a moment, Imoen halted on the threshold of the cave, breathing in the scene. Two tall walls of rock, golden and red in the mid-morn sun; in between them, a slice of azure welkin above, an azure ribbon of a clear, shallow stream below; a small patch of scarce grass with two horses grazing, across the stream, in the far left of the field of vision. A birch tree just to her right, halfway through to the opening of the mist cave, with a splendid, imperial bird perched on one of the lower branches. An-Nasr at-Taïr.

The eagle was watching the commotion below with fond indulgence on her beak; Imoen crouched on the threshold and decided not to interfere, either, just for a wee bit longer.

They were fighting with their real weapons, no makeshift practice stuff: Anomen, in his left hand his mace, hiding carefully behind the family shield he carried in the other, dealing out blows warily, guardedly, rarely; intent and concentrated, and yet so much more—relaxed? Yes: that was it, Imoen concluded in the end with some surprise. If this was how he usually fought—yes, it was, she remembered from that brief skirmish— But it was not hers to judge his skill, ultimately; she did not have the skill to judge.

She could not help but grin when she shifted her gaze to the squire's opponent. He was not fighting with the Edge of Chaos now, and he, too, was wielding the Burning Earth, Dalok's flame tongue, in his left—though for him, the weaker—hand; as she watched, he suddenly hastened his pace and attacked; both men crossed the stream in a shrewd parade of blows and parries; for a moment, the tip of the flame trailing after the sword touched the surface of water, and there was a loud hiss and a massive cloud of steam, but neither fighter broke his concentration so much as to cast a look at it— The footwork was brilliant.

So, Sarevok was feeling lonely. And there was a part of him that wanted not the company of a little sister with whom to throw epigrams and enchantments at each other and at enemies, intellectually satisfying as a burning remark or a burning horde of goblins might be; there was a part of him that longed for the pure physical exhilaration of a spar, a fight. Not those random fights which were over within seconds and demanded little skill of him, or even those where he must wade through a horde of such weak enemies; her finicky, perfectionist brother wanted a fight which would be a goal unto itself; and someone to fight that fight with; a werewolf with whom to wrestle. The difference was, perhaps, like that between a trap Imoen herself must disarm to get somewhere and a trap she could play around with in her free time, at leisure.

He must have been so incredibly disappointed yesterday, when he had found out that Anomen would not deliver; that the squire was not proficient enough a fighter and mature a man to admit that he must retreat the battlefield; that he would try to impress them instead— Them? No. Him, rather. Not for Imoen's attention had Anomen continued to fight during yesterday's skirmish; for her, he would have remembered his oath. As it was, rivalry—after all, no squire of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart could possibly be expected to withdraw while an outlaw held his spot—had prevailed over chivalry: duty and obligation to the outlaw's sister. Sarevok— 

The fight stopped for a moment, far away, by the horses; Sarevok put away the flame blade, picked up the druid staff Pauden's gift; weighed it in one hand, to see how balanced it was; tried a few, almost random, moves with a deep, concentrated scowl. Anomen drank from his water bag; picked up the Burning Earth; asked something, pointing at the weapon's hilt; Sarevok replied something; then, said something much longer, gesturing at Anomen's feet, and his shield arm; the conversation lasted a few minutes more; all the while, Imoen, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, pondered.

There were certain—things; the idea itself was extremely vague, and she found she could not define it any further. But Sarevok was the kind of person who knew that a crimson rhodelia and a ring were the emblem of the Delryns. His own family—his foster family, she corrected, with a private smile—they had not been noble; as far as she could tell, at least. But they had been powerful. And there were certain things you learnt—you just absorbed from the air, sort of—when you grew up and lived among powerful people. Things she did not know. Such as what an Ilvastarr of Waterdeep was. She knew her own things instead, but that, not.

Anomen was probably the first person his own age Sarevok had met for a long, long time who would know such things if woken up an hour before dawn and asked. And he could fight, physically, much better than she did. And he was, well, a man, and there was no escaping that this also mattered. In a way, he was much more her brother's kind of person than she was.

Of course, orcs were also her brother's kind of people. That was part of the problem with him.

---

The two men started to fight again: at first, only circling each other; then, Sarevok attacked high, on the head; a loud, dull sound resounded as Anomen caught the blow on his shield; instantly, a second blow, low, at the shins; another parry; Anomen attacked—

The staff looked fairly ridiculous in her brother's hands; like a twig, almost. And he looked simply odd without a sword. But, somewhere beyond his complete focus on his moves, and Anomen's moves—because there was no doubt who the teacher there was, and who the pupil: it was enough to look at the squire's eyes—Sarevok was radiant. Fairly aglow with happiness. The way he had looked when he had met Altair.

Her cat had grown bored with her as soon as he had noticed the eagle; now, he was sitting next to the bird on the tree, washing himself nonchalantly. Altair, too, was grooming her feathers, from time to time casting nervous, furtive looks at the four-pawed ball of fur.

She let the fight last for a quarter of an hour longer; then, softly, said in the eagle's direction, "Altair, tell my good-for-nothing brother to stop fooling around. There is work to be done."

In the distance, Sarevok stole an amused glance towards her; then, hastened his pace and, in a few easy, vicious blows, drew his opponent to surrender. Then, for some further ten minutes, he discussed with Anomen whatever minute imperfections he must have still found in the squire's balance; then, helped him out of his splint mail, and tied it to Grasshopper's saddle; then, the two men, now with cooled heads, started to wash off the sweat in the cold water of the stream— Imoen would have sworn that Sarevok was delaying the reunion on purpose.

Then, at last, the men dressed, gathered the weapons, the water bags, the healing potions, and the palomino, and headed in her direction; Anomen finally noticed her, and, immediately, on cue, wide-eyed, blushed.

"Milady Imoen!" he exclaimed. "Forgive us— We were not aware—" He sputtered.

"Aware of what?" Imoen replied, feigning earnest incomprehension over her spell-book. Today, she decided, it was not the day for teasing; a handsome man who blushed because a woman saw him shirtless must be an even shyer, more private creature than she had earlier suspected Anomen Delryn to be.

"That you were present, my lady" the man finished, still with some difficulty; then, added, brightly, "I trust you slept soundly?! We tried not to wake you…"

"She did, squire," an amused voice replied from the height of a charger's back. "No elves around."

Imoen smiled, briefly; Anomen, perplexed, listened to a curt, "My sword and my staff, Delryn," put away his own shield and mace, and accepted, in turn, both weapons from the speaker.

"You'll be taking Grasshopper and Altair with you, brother?" Imoen asked; at the same time, Anomen demanded, "Where are you going, Anchev?!"

"To meet potential allies, squire," Sarevok replied smoothly. "My sister will give you the details." Then, with a light bow, he turned to Imoen. "I will dispatch Altair once the first contact proves successful, sibling."

"Of course, brother," she replied in the same brisk, businesslike tone; without even adding, After all, you will need her, otherwise.

---

"Where is he going, my lady?" Anomen asked curiously once Sarevok rode away into the canyon; To impress some orcs, Imoen almost replied; but instead, she said only, "Apparently, some friends of his live nearby. He'll be back soon."

That last statement, the squire took singularly without protest; but, a moment later, he cried out, with horror, "But—my armour? He— He took my armour!"

Imoen, incredulous, looked at the man, utterly mortifying him with her disbelief, and replied, "Yes, he did."

She sighed when she saw his face. "My guess, Anomen, is he thinks they may have something better for you, and he's taken it to have your measures at hand… Don't worry. You'll get it back. Probably," she added truthfully. "Listen… Do you have anything to do? Because I must finish scribing these abjuration spells. It'll take me an hour, and then, we'll perhaps have a chat about that dragon—"

"But… my lady… Anchev… your brother, that is—"

Imoen studied the earnest, boyish face in front of her, and mentally cursed her brother's recent matchmaking hobby. First, he had set the cat and the bird upon each other; now, this. Yes: Anomen Delryn did exhibit extremely fine, well-toned pectorals; yes: he was an heir, a nobleman, and a future paladin; and yes: as a substitute guardian, a Helmite ranked perhaps somewhat higher than a cat—but there simply didn't exist a man to whom she could be less attracted. Well… Coran, perhaps.

For a moment, she wondered why exactly it had been so much easier to accept a flat-out 'You have no choice' from a much inferior, much eviller man, than this innocent—perhaps due to nothing but politeness—objection; when, in the end, she calmed down enough, she said, icily, "We will manage without him, I think."

She watched the blush enter the squire's cheeks again, and finished, trying not to sound unkind, "Just take an hour's nap, Anomen, or something, while I finish. You must be tired. Then, we'll talk."

"Aye, my lady," Anomen Delryn replied with a sigh; and then, sincerely, added, "I think I need seek my Lord Helm's guidance again. 'Tis a most thorny quest He would have me partake in."

---

…_Suldanessellar._

She leafed through the pages of the diary to the place where she had tried to fill in what had happened in Athkatla—the escape from Irenicus' place, and all that had happened among the thieves; but what she was searching for was not there. It was Edwin who had said something about a geas, she remembered, that was how she had learnt what it was, but—

It was not there; she sighed, added a small note about the theft of the Moira Delryn files, with a cross-reference to the fifteenth of Mirtul, the current date, and closed the small book.

A few steps away from her, Anomen was sitting in the shade of the birch tree. He was glowing lightly to her other eyes as he prayed; and she smiled. Perhaps she had been too hard on him; he must feel really out of his depth on his first independent mission; especially given that it was not even supposed to be such.

A high cry on the air; Pangur lifted his head from his napping spot on the tree; Altair, lightning fast, swooped down before stopping mid-air, so close to Imoen's face that her wings lifted the rosy hair; in her talons, she was carrying a pheasant.

"Good thinking," Imoen, relieved by the arrival, told her; and, because, if her brother might borrow her cat to pretend indifference, she might as well steal his eagle to hunt, she added, "Can you fetch two or three more?"

Altair cried, once; once moved her massive wings; left off; the man under the tree sounded, for once, genuinely impressed, as he said, "She is… magnificent, my lady."

"She is my brother's," Imoen replied simply, picking up the pheasant to pluck it.

"Aye, my lady, I know. But she is, indeed, superbly trained. If I may venture a guess—magic?"

Imoen nodded, but chose not to explain beyond a, half-jesting, "Pure magic."

The man drew closer. "May I aid you, my lady? 'Twas my task, as a squire's, to arrange the knights' fare, and I grew quite skilled in the preparation of a wild-bird stew," he said, for once unassuming; Imoen hid a smile. This sounded far more genuine a feat than yesterday's tales of the Hillgnasher Giants; and so, she passed the bird to the squire whilst he, proudly, added, "Sir Keldorn—"

He halted, blushed, and cast a cautious look in Imoen's direction. "It's all right," she replied. "I see no reason to hide the fact that the man my brother killed used to enjoy your stew, Anomen. What about Ilvastarr?"

"Ajantis, my lady? Ajantis was only just knighted— Forgive me, my lady," Anomen said, evidently in response to the involuntary grimace which crossed Imoen's face. "I meant no offence—"

"No. It's all right," she replied, watching the man at work; he really did seem practised at it. "I think I should be the one to apologise. For yesterday's charm, for one thing."

The man frowned. "I think, my lady, that you already did. And, according to… your brother, I have yet to thank you for giving me a chance to redeem my error after he—" Another pause; another blush. "After he shamed me."

"Shamed you," Imoen repeated, ghastly fascinated; finally comprehending the purpose behind yesterday's display of brotherly affection. A slap on the cheek to leave Anomen Delryn without teeth; the physical punch had been just the supplement. Sarevok had wielded truth as he wielded his sword, aiming at the weak spots in the squire's armour until he had broken it and him both in a single move.

The only comfort lay, perhaps, in that truth was a sword which maimed its wielder, its victim and casual bystanders alike; and so, that Anomen had not been the only one affected by it. However carefully choreographed the moves, the emotion and final intent had been genuine; Sarevok would not have almost killed Anomen had they not been. He would not have lost control. Not in actual point of fact.

Absently, she watched as, before her, feather after feather left the bird's corpse.

"Aye, my lady." Feather. "He shamed me, or, better said, I shamed myself…" Feather. Feather. "I nearly forsook my pledge to you. He—" Feather. "—had every right—" Feather. "—to handle me—" A whole bunch, torn out in one quick, angry move. "—like an honourless knave."

"You do know that he has no honour himself, Anomen?" she asked quietly; the cruelty was almost too much. They needed the squire to follow, that he may live; not loathing himself for his youth, that he may have no reason to do so. "You said so yourself."

"Aye, my lady. 'Tis the gist: till I purge that stain from my honour, I cannot presume myself anything but that outlawed felon's equal…" Anomen raised his head, and blushed again. "Forgive me, my lady. I constantly forget 'tis your brother we speak of."

Imoen smiled, and picked up the pheasant Altair had just brought. "I don't mind. Me and Sarevok—Sarevok and I—we really haven't known each other long. We were, actually, about to break up when the five of you attacked us."

"Aye, my lady, I gathered that," Anomen, still flushed, replied; and so, before he could say anything in the vein of, 'I cannot think you would want to stay with that brute through your own will. Has he kept you by force, my lady?' or 'I am sure that you found yourself in that blackguard's presence by pure accident, my lady'—for she really was in the mood neither for a youth's worship nor for any possible consequence of it, not so soon after Cernd—she said, calmly, "I don't think even Sarevok would mind if you called him that. After all, that's what he is."

And so, Anomen, bitterly, replied instead, "Aye. An outlawed felon. A murderer who yearned for the death of all in Amn… Walking her unpunished, riding my lord d'Arnise's own steed, with an eagle trained for a hunting bird on his arm, and a loving sister by his side… I, too, had a sister, once, my lady," he added; and Imoen, who suspected the answer, must ask, "What happened to her?"

If she let any trace of personal interest seep into her words, Anomen did not hear it. "An old enemy of my father's, Saerk Farrahd, had her murdered while I was away from Athkatla, my lady. Moira… she was not a lady at arms. Without me to protect her, she was defenceless."

"I'm sorry," Imoen replied, truthfully, without wondering, much, why Moira had not been a lady at arms; then asked, "Did the guard catch him?"

"Aye, in the end, justice prevailed, my lady," Anomen added, in a slightly happier tone. "Saerk was foolish enough to keep evidence of his crime in his own private safe. That was stolen, in a break-in that, no doubt, he staged himself—" Imoen, privately, groaned. "—But his own daughter, ashamed of his wickedness, had made a copy of it in time, and presented it to the magistrate. I had the pleasure of delivering the news of Saerk's arrest to Lord Delryn myself! Aye, my lady, truth and justice prevailed. But Anchev…" he said, clearly unable to shake the so named off his mind, "He… He has justice for nothing. Holds it in scorn, even— Have I heard it correctly, my lady? That… Safana, she was hired to find him for that vampire, Bodhi?"

"Apparently, she was," Imoen replied, curious what Anomen Delryn might have to say about it.

"My lady, half the Order's might is tied in Athkatla, fighting Bodhi's coven! 'Tis, I shan't deny, a true and righteous endeavour, and one I would gladly lay my life for… Yet, my lady, now, knowing that Bodhi stands against him, I cannot shake the feeling that Anchev is behind this, pitting the lives of his betters against his private foes—" Imoen, who knew it for sure, decided to keep her silence. "—and laughing as he does so!"

The young knight, now positively furious, looked up at her, and she felt compelled to say, diplomatically, "It does sound like something which would appeal to my brother's sense of humour, yes."

Anomen took the last undressed pheasant, crossly, and said, "Aye, my lady. Your foul heritage shan't concern the Order till you stray from the path of righteousness; but Sarevok Anchev is a devious fiend who needs be slain. He knows no rule, whether human or divine; he is the worst kind of blackguard and a law unto himself. He thinks himself different…"

He is different, Imoen wanted to scream at the man. He is a seven-foot-tall man with glowing golden eyes. And you're scared when he's just looking at you. Perhaps he's normal, somewhere, but it's not in Amn. He can't hide, not like I can.

Although, to tell the truth, there were people from whom she could not hide, either. She had not enjoyed the experience.

"…better…"

Half the time, he's all smug and proud of himself because he knows perfectly how absolutely annoying he is like that, Imoen laughed. And he is brilliant. It's just that kind of arrogance of excellence which the crowd, the average, the mundane, the mediocre, simply want to bring down to its knees, to make it apologise for itself and beg for their approval by inventing some weakness for their express perusal. My brother has his weaknesses, Anomen Delryn; I know some of them. He simply sees no reason to share them with you.

"…untouchable…"

I have avenged some of my fallen, Imoen thought, and others do not want to be avenged. The rest, I leave to you. Catch him, if you can. While you still can.

"…but even he, my lady, shall fall before the holy wrath of the righteous!"

Fight him, then, she almost spoke out aloud. Only that you can't fight him alone, can you? Gang up on him, then— Honestly, between his superiority and your encouragement of mob rule, I'm almost beginning to regret that I'm on your side, squire. You completely missed the point, after all. He's evil.

---

Pangur, Altair. Cruelty, guilt, choices. Knights, striking insidiously: two to the fore, one to the side, where one least suspects them.

Once, they used to infringe each other's space, crudely: standing closely to each other; handling each other, physically— They barely touched each other, now. There was little need to. But boundaries were still tried and tested, if more subtly.

Sarevok wanted to protect her, then, in that casual cruelty of a murderer who would protect his victim from future murderers. He wanted to kill Anomen, and offered to kill Coran, and then, at her behest, killed neither; and he felt guilt for drawing her into his matters; and then, he lost control as he realised his weakness and the chink in his own armour. And they were at arms against a common foe, and that was right enough, and she had no choice.

And, even before all that, when they both thought they were parting, he would try to remain in her life; insinuate himself into it through a back door. He offered her Pangur.

Everything, perhaps, harked back to that old saying: once you saved a person's life, you were responsible for it; to simple arithmetic: if, in the end, he survived, she would not; to retroactive guilt: if she survived, he would not.

She offered him Altair.

She offered him an eagle, and made him happy, as a human, for a moment; and, in the same move, told him that one of the very few acts of mercy—perhaps the only one—he had committed in his life was utterly meaningless.

Casual cruelty was not a complicated art, to one, by birthright, a cruel goddess: a bit of honey in one hand; a bit of poison in the other; and, in the end, a choice. And she had not had the worst teachers, all in all.

She did not mind that her brother wished to protect her; if they travelled together, they must protect each other, and there was something to be told for having Sarevok on and at and by her side. And if it helped him assuage guilt, then guilt existed; her words had not left him untouched, and that, perhaps, had a meaning of its own. But killing came to Sarevok easily; and so, she, in her own brand of cruelty, would have him not kill, but endure Anomen Delryn.

Anomen would change him, of course—he already had, yesternight: there was no reason why a nascent God of Murder should care the least for the death of his own lackeys. But the cat had caught and brought home Anomen Delryn; and Anomen Delryn must survive long enough, despite himself, if needed. It was a challenge, as much as Anomen himself was a nobleman and a fighter; her brother enjoyed challenges and longed for the company of nobles, men, and fighters.

The siblings were not fools, either of them: there was not a speck of any innate goodness anyone might find in Sarevok, no hidden depths for anyone to discover. All semblance of decency there could ever possibly appear would have to be crafted out of utter void with a great deal of hard work; but, because Irenicus made the brother capable of feeling pain and regret for Semaj, and then pain and anger for Angelo; and because he felt for Cernd—and even because he felt for Aran Linvail; for, however the thought might revolt the sister, the brother really did feel something for that smart, elegant, repulsive man—she, in her cruelty, gave him Altair, with every reservation that he might refuse her gift, every step of the way.

And he was, of course, at most letting her let him try out being happy in her society, following her rules, for the meantime; for, ultimately, his fate would be his own choice; and she would not want it otherwise. All she ever did was give him an eagle, that he remember a sister, a promise, and an alternative; she would not waste time on the futile endeavour of attempting to mould a murderer into something else. She had her own life to think of.

With her, Sarevok was horse-playing, eagle-hunting, ridiculing his sister's former boyfriends and teasing squires; with him, she was killing paladins, seeing him charm and beat up people, and drugging them herself to put them to sleep. Decent people cursed her on sight in his company; and though he may not wish it, it still happened.

He was nothing but a brilliant, murderous leper.

She liked him, she suspected.


	25. IV: Knights' Attack, 6

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**6**

"—Did you know, my lady, how that wrongdoer addressed me this morning? By declaring that, though you were clement enough not to instantly decry me a perjurer, he must try me afore he let me again stand by his side in combat!"

Imoen, thrown out of her private thoughts, equally privately smiled: underneath Anomen's knightly speech, Sarevok had decided to use a tactic which, employed with slightly more subtlety, had the best chance to work against him—

The indignant squire, meanwhile, spoke on, "I answered, naturally, that I owe fealty and homage but to my Lord Helm, and that only He shall Try my vigilance, when He finds me ready to face the challenge of knighthood! That unholy bastard—forgive me, my lady—replied that he had no interest in appraising my integrity, only my readiness to kill!"

Unholy bastard, Imoen thought, now that's a good one; but Anomen Delryn was looking at her expectantly over the almost plucked pheasant, and so, she asked, "Did you hit him?"

The man blinked, frowned, scowled and grimaced; but, interestingly, did not blush. "Aye, my lady, I did…" he said slowly, "…or, at least, I tried to. When he dared me to… My patience simply…" Now, the youth's cheeks did bloom crimson of the exact shade of his heraldic rhodelia. "…broke, and I set upon him in a most ignoble manner…"

A voice, coming from an oneiric past: _Murder is chaos. Release. _Anomen Delryn was not a Child of Bhaal, to the best of Imoen's reckoning; but she rather suspected she knew what he must have felt at that particular point. She had been there, if only more so. "And?"

"And that fiend simply stood there and laughed! He said that he was satisfied that there was enough of my Lord Helm's own in me to follow simple orders!"

"And?"

"And I," a blush, coming on call, like some sort of a punctuation mark— "broke his nose."

"You," Imoen repeated, in the sudden glee of disbelieving satisfaction, "broke my brother's nose?"

The man did not blush; instead, he looked her straight in the eye as he said, firmly, defiantly, "Aye."

That's what comes of too much arrogance, brother, Imoen thought. What if he had not been angry enough not to arm himself when the spell went out? You would be golden dust in Father's kingdom now. "And what did my brother do?"

"He hit me," sending you to ground, Imoen filled in, seeing the extremely crimson blush, "commended me on my initiative and told me to think twice before attempting it again. And then, he told me to pray."

"To pray," Imoen found herself repeating again. Suddenly, she was starting to see how the morning's sparring session had come to be; Sarevok, as always, hit low.

"Aye, my lady," Anomen replied, just as she expected and suddenly much more at ease with the conversation. "He told me to enquire my Lord Helm if He had any objection if, for the length of our travels together, he took me into his ward, in return for my allegiance. Though, of course," he sighed, "neither he nor I could swear to our intent, not being men of honour. But my Lord Helm approved of the arrangement, as long as…" A brief hesitation.

"As long as?" Imoen pressed; there was the feeling that a great deal of anger, outcry and resentment had been suddenly glossed over, perhaps even forgotten in view of the final result. She let it pass, with the private note to remind her brother that, while, this time, he obtained the miracle he wanted, as a rule, neither second-guessing nor bargaining with gods should be attempted lightly; as he should best know.

"…as long as Anchev kept his word, and I did not stray from the path of vigil," Anomen said, with more than a trace of his previous bitter anger; Imoen could almost hear the squire's next words already: ''Tis not fair!' It wasn't. Or was it? Helm would know.

The pheasants, forgotten, were lying on the ground; she started to pick them up, shaking off the feathers from her clothes, when Anomen, instead, said slowly, tentatively, "Your brother, my lady, is a… fine fighter."

"Yes, he is," Imoen replied, surprised by the sudden calmness of the assessment; then, weirdly curious, she asked, "Did you enjoy sparring with him?"

The man blushed. "Aye, but 'tis not of that that I— That is, 'tis even true that," a pause of a missed heartbeat, "Sir Keldorn himself would not go against him but in the company of three others and also my own… But what I meant to ask you, my lady, about, is that Anchev asked me to think how I would go about slaying a dragon."

They were supposed to talk about it themselves, Imoen remembered suddenly. "And what did you reply?"

"That… Forgive me, my lady, but I simply… don't know. There are tales of valiant knights who slew such wyrms, but…" Suddenly, the squire looked up, straight at her. "Those friends of his—?"

"They are orcs," she said simply, and was rewarded by an indignant, "Orcs?!"

"Yes. Don't ask me about it. I don't think it's one of his better ideas. Those tales? What do they say? Anything useful?"

She interrupted at the sight of an alien vision: a small, self-conscious smile dawned on Anomen's lips. "'Tis, my lady, what your brother charged me to consider in his absence."

---

The pheasants were stewing slowly in their own sauce—Pangur had bothered to climb down from the tree and tried to put a nose and a paw into the pot they had found in the werewolf's cave, only to be rather inelegantly smacked (**Ouch!**) across the offending appendages by Imoen—and quite a lot of details of dragon-slaying tales had been remembered by the time Sarevok returned. Not yet enough for a detailed battle-plan, but certainly halfway there.

Which was why, when the cat meowed, and the eagle cried, and the squire and the sister looked up to see the lone man rounding the canyon's turn, leading by his reins a golden charger burdened with a set of armour, they were so surprised when, upon approaching them, he completely ignored the topic; and pronounced instead—without greeting, but entirely amused, "It appears, Delryn, that this is your fortunate day."

Anomen frowned. "How so?"

"To attention, squire," he heard, "I must look at you. Now turn around. Gracefully."

"What?!"

"With flair, squire," a rather bored voice replied. "The dance is, one presumes, one of the noble arts, Delryn. I am still waiting for you to prove that."

A rather stiff pirouette, committed rather than performed to the grinding of teeth, followed; "Tolerable. Mind your feet— Yes, indeed," the judge pronounced, "Tazok's plate, currently the property of my soon-to-be father-in-law, will suit you just fine. Dress up, squire. To answer your question, we are going against vampires."

The meticulously blushing object of the harassment hazarded unhappily, "Vampires?"

A rosy-haired woman currently extinguishing a fire snorted in assistance, "Father-in-law, brother?"

The target of the joint charge frowned. "Indeed, sister. My hopeful bride demands vampires' heads in her wedding gift; this will be, I believe, the perfect opportunity for you, Delryn, to make amends for yesterday's foolery— And this is, I believe, yours, sister."

Three quick looks: a roll of parchment, slightly yellow and tattered on the edges, with a waxen seal, at present broken; Sarevok, completely unrepentant for having infringed the privacy of his sister's correspondence, quickly fitting a squire's armour; a missive, written in a red ink and a slightly slanted, old-fashioned, seriffed hand:

_**To Imoen, Ward of Gorion**_

(I am not her, Imoen thought with utter annoyance—)

_**Jierdan Firkraag, Fifth Baron Windspear**_

(—a long list of other titles, not all of which sounded particularly human—)

_**on the fourteenth day of Mirtul, 1369**_

(—yesterday, then; yesterday, Firkraag knew that they would get this far in searching for him—)

The message itself was brief:

_**This game is interesting, but it drags on and on. Shan't we meet? To gain audience on my court, find the arms of Strohm III.**_

Imoen looked up from the scroll and, driven to the edge, asked amiably up front, "Sarevok, what in the Nine Hells is happening here?"

Quite delighted, her brother replied, without interrupting fitting his squire's pauldrons, "Apparently, Firkraag is not the first dragon to have settled in this place, sister. Not even the first red dragon. This is, perhaps, not surprising, given the lay of the terrain… Don't move, Delryn— You shall see for yourself, sister; and you, squire, had better consider how you would assault a fairly well-defended citadel—"

"—Candlekeep?"

"—if possible, without taking any further hints from my sister," the tale-teller adjoined smoothly. "However. That dragon was slain by Strohm III, who, the tale has it, was wielding a dragon-slaying sword, bearing a dragon-scale shield and sporting a dragon-scale helmet as he did so."

"And was buried here," Imoen finished, with a deep, disconsolate sigh of understanding. "With his relics."

"Firkraag must have learnt that after he settled here; or have settled here because he had learnt that. Whichever that was, he took offence. That is why he brought Dig Dag here—"

"Aye!" Anomen, rapidly accumulating steel plates, barged into the breach. "What is this talk of parlaying with orcs I hear? I cannot approve—"

"They were more willing to reveal intelligence than you had been, squire," the man fitting his armour said, without much spite; and then, laughing lightly at the blush, added, "Don't worry, Delryn. You won't be parlaying with them. You will be going to their aid and succour."

"What?!" This time, Anomen was not the only one to protest; "Little brother?"

"Little sister—squire," an amused voice replied, "I thought better of you. After that dazzling deductive work you two carried out turning those muddled anecdotes into viable strategies—" Imoen looked around: Altair had the basic aquiline decency to appear slightly more ashamed than her owner, and about half as much as Anomen, "—this is, surely, obvious? A vampire came here several days ago—"

"The night shift to Safana's daytime's," Imoen muttered to herself, rolling her eyes in defeat. "And her covert ally."

A curt, civil smile. "Now, there are five vampires, preying on the orcs for blood. All used to be weakskin… human, by the looks of them, Dig Dag says."

"But who—?" Anomen sputtered; for a moment, the siblings both watched him with identical expectant expressions; in the end, he shrugged desperately and answered his own question. "Firkraag's tenants, aye? Garren Windspear and his children lived the closest nearby… We must go and destroy those filthy undead!" he pled, casting a woeful look in Sarevok's direction.

"Indeed, Delryn," the other man replied, watching his squire closely through the veneer of levity. "As I said… It is your fortunate day."

And, seeing the youth in his bright, shining armour which fit so well his bright, shining eyes, he added, by reflex, "However. You are still ugly."

---

Imoen sighed. If she wanted to, she could hear Pangur's contented purring in her head; her cat, proudly curled up next to Altair like a guardian dog next to his herded sheep, was paying her absolutely no attention as he openly ogled the eagle with dreamy cornflower eyes. Coran had lost a dryad, a werewolf and a thief in one day; her brother was getting married without even bothering to introduce her first to her future sister-in-law. The world was full of people living their lives, and leaving her behind. It was, perhaps, if one insisted, not fair. And Sarevok—

Before her, Sarevok took a few steps away from Anomen, folded his arms, cocked his head, eyed his handiwork, and asked with amusement bordering on open laughter, "Well, squire?"

No answer was forthcoming; and so, a fluent torrent of questions followed. "Too tight? Too loose? Does it chafe anywhere? Hinder you? Try to walk in it. Run in it. Make an attack. Does it feel any different—"

"'Tis… light," Anomen interrupted suddenly, blinking, frowning. All the previous questions and commands seemed to have completely passed him by.

"It's the magic on it," Imoen offered, walking around the man to inspect him from all sides, pauldrons to greaves. The armour was only slightly tarnished; she had expected much worse from something that had been in orcs' hands. "Do you have a helmet to go with it, brother?"

The treacherous glimmer of tender admiration finally disappeared as her brother replied briskly, "Yes, sister. Here."

"So, what's this talk of your marriage, brother?" his sister asked calmly, taking the horned helmet from him. It was faintly magical, but, more importantly for the moment, surprisingly clean. "Why didn't the orcs deal with the vampires themselves?"

"Apparently, sister, Firkraag forbid them. The—marriage is as good a word as any, perhaps—is Dig Dag's vulgar attempt to fool me into trusting him."

"I thought so," Imoen replied as Anomen, absently, knelt and bowed his head, and she put the helmet on his head, covering his face almost entirely. "Why are you agreeing to it?"

"Because, sister, the orc may yet change his mind; and that was the only way to fool him into trusting me."

"Hmm. What of the bride?" She took a few steps back, and would have walked into Sarevok if he had not neatly removed himself from her path at the last moment. In front of them, Anomen was getting up from the ground again—extremely slowly, as if his joints had been completely frozen and were only now thawing; or, perhaps, as if exactly the opposite were true: that his legs were so weak that he feared that, once forced upright, he would collapse. "He looks so handsome, don't you think, brother? All he needs now is one of those big swords paladins like to play with— I know. Why don't you give him yours to try out how it feels?"

Next to her, burning eyes promised her an eternity of torment. It was an expression which her brother had mastered to a tee. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because the Edge of Chaos is mine, sister. Because, to forge it, Muramasa Sengo summoned demons and sacrificed—"

"Not the paladin type, then," Imoen declared, satisfied.

There was a curt laugh. "Not really, no."

"Then I'm sorry I asked, little brother." In front of them, Anomen had returned to the world from his private pocket plane of utter almost-knightly bliss, and was looking at them in a wild search for something to say; and so, because she could, she told him, "You still haven't told my brother if the armour fits, Anomen."

"Aye, my lady… It does," the man replied slowly, completely oblivious to the amused, self-conscious thirst with which his words were drunk in certain quarters; then, shifting his gaze between the siblings, he added thoughtfully, "But I have no sword. The Burning Earth will blind us in the darkness."

"That's no problem," Imoen shrugged. "My brother will enchant your mace for a day. I'll go pack the dinner and the things as he does it, I think. And you— Brother, what is he supposed to do?"

The response was as coolly purposeful as ever might be. "Accustom yourself to the armour and devise the best strategy to destroy the vampires, squire. Their presence here awakened the buried dead; we may have to confront shades, wraiths, mummies, ghouls, ghasts and skeletons. That is all we know. Nothing of the area, numbers, or defences. You know what your assets are."

Under his horned helmet, Anomen opened his mouth; then, blinked and closed it, slowly.

"And mind your previous assignment, squire," Sarevok added without much feeling; and, leaving a sister and a squire behind, headed for the inside of the cave, picking in passing a mace which to enchant.

---

"Apparently, orcs cannot pass by the guardians of Strohm's tomb," Sarevok was explaining coolly as they rounded the corner of the gorge in the postprandial heat; the rest of their meal, they had packed into an earthenware jar they had found in the werewolves' cave. It was good to have bags of holding as saddlebags, Imoen mused, especially since Sarevok insisted on those dragon scales. "That is why Firkraag wants us to—"

"To rob a tomb," a squire currently riding a golden horse interjected crossly. "An execrable atrocity if there ever was one!"

"A fair point, squire," Sarevok replied lightly. "The waste of our time this foray will involve certainly warrants calling it execrable, and perhaps even an atrocity. What do you propose instead?"

"To attack the dragon."

"The dragon refuses to present himself to be attacked until we bring him the relics, squire."

"Does it mean that we can rob his lair while he's away?" Imoen, currently walking next to her brother in their joint attempt to improve their stamina, asked with deep interest.

"Your mercurial sense of humour, fair sibling, never fails to astound me. However. Have you never heard the proverb, 'Never laugh—'"

"'—at live dragons,' brother?"

"Coined, I believe, by a halfling burglar in a position similar to our own. We must meet the dragon to extract testimony, Delryn, and the dragon knows that. Hence, we must play, for the moment, his game— The eyrie."

**Whoa. Tha's one big sill t'sit on. Sunny, too! The chick'll love it!**

Cats and birds planning their love nests aside, Imoen was beginning to understand her brother's uncanny apprehension. The eyrie was enormous.

---

The canyon drew to a dead end; and where it did, over the stream which narrowed into a trickle and disappeared amid the barren rocks, there was a gargantuan outcropping; a tall sandstone ledge, high above the ground, set ablaze by the rays of the harsh midday sun. One could see an opening behind it, and that must be the dragon's lair; the least of mercies was that there was no dragon in sight.

They all halted at the view; Altair, recalled to hand by Sarevok some time ago, was hopping nervously, and Imoen suddenly realised that both the eagle and, through her eyes, her brother had seen this yesterday already; and that, possibly, there had even been a dragon in sight then.

"Well, squire?" Sarevok asked calmly. "How do you propose to attack this particular citadel?"

There was no reply; and so, the squire was probed and prodded further. "Surely Firecam taught you the basics of strategy and tactics?"

"Sir Keldorn did," the squire replied, stressing the paladin's title; then, with sudden anger, added, "But 'tis no reason to speak of them with you, Anchev."

Sarevok shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because—" Suddenly, like a volcano or an overheated steam boiler, pulling up the horse with the reins to confront the earthbound man, the squire erupted, "—Because you killed him!" Erupted; and then, scowling under his helmet and coiled and tense in his ornate, engraved, embossed armour on the golden stallion—froze, expectantly.

It sounded almost like a plea, Imoen decided with a tight heart; yet, if it was one, it was promptly rejected. In his soiled clothes the colour of old gold; lightly intercepting Grasshopper's reins and drawing the dancing steed to himself—Sarevok replied, "Which means, squire, that I am here and he is not. Revere your god and revere your master, Delryn, as you like; I have no need for your worship at present. Later—" A lazy, appraising look up the horse's neck, sending the armoured man straight into an irately crimson flush, "—perhaps. If you pray. If you insist. For now, squire, I am only asking you how you would attack that place."

A single word, fired rather than said down the stallion's neck, "Why?"

"Because there is time."

"Time?!"

Imoen sighed. "Anomen—"

"Sister." This time, the growl was definitely not amused. "Delryn, must we really repeat the morning's session? I need know how we shall attack that place."

"Not from the front, 'tis certain," the squire retorted, fuming. "Unless you can grow wings, Bhaalspawn."

There was a minimally too long silence on all the parts involved; then, "Sister?"

The sister in question said, dryly, "He can fight, dance and cook. He looks much better than you do in armour—" "Thank you, sister." "—and, apparently, he broke your nose, although I have only his word for it; but I have no reason not to believe it. And he made a joke of you. Whatever sick test you'd been giving him, brother, you can't deny that he approved. With flying colours, I might add," she added, casting a meaningful look at a spot of rhodelia-coloured epidermis under a horned helmet.

There was another slightly too long, deeply startled silence; then, swiftly, as a mind recalled a forgotten, offhand remark vis-à-vis a trial, or Trials—words flowed, "Indeed, squire. My sister has the right of it; and, as a matter of fact, so do you."

A slight pause, long enough to let the words sink in; and then, Sarevok started to narrate calmly, "A frontal assault, as you said, is impossible without wings; or a siege tower, teleportation magic, or any similar means which we do not possess. That is why we must search for a back door."

Another slight pause, this time to ensure that the audience was listening; followed by, "Those caves, inhabited by the orcs—" Sarevok pointed in the vaguely north-eastern direction, where there were, indeed, some dark fissures in the rock side, "—connect, I am assured, both to the tomb and to Firkraag's own place. The elimination of Bodhi's agent, which we must effect regardless, will serve as fee for the orcs' extended neutrality. The vampires dwell in a separate cavern. There." Closer to the left, in the western wall of the canyon, there was a fairly large opening in the sandstone. "This will be our first target." An inquiring look.

"'Tis daytime," Anomen replied, and Imoen smiled.

A curt nod. "Then, we will explore the tomb; following that, we will be almost certainly attacked by Dig Dag, who will wish to curry favour with his master—"

"If so, why shan't we attack them first? They are only orcs."

"An excellent question, squire. Sister?"

Imoen stirred; and trying to sound professionally adventurous again, said, "Because of the 'almost' part, Anomen. It's just possible that the orcs will decide to side with us against the dragon. If my brother played his part correctly," she added, casting a meaningful look at said brother.

He smiled. "Precisely. Dismount, Delryn. My retainer can't be seen riding while I walk. I would have to kill you," he added merrily.

For a moment, Anomen bristled at the moniker; but, as he was helped dismount, he said only, as if he had bitten into something bitter, "Subterfuge." Then, sulkily, he added, "'Tis no knightly deed to fool orcs."

He promptly missed the oddly human flicker of a look whose target he was at this juncture, and arrived on the ground to hear, spoken curtly, equably, "Come, squire. Let me introduce you to my bride."

For then, he balked. "Your bride, Anchev?!"

There was a cool smile. "Yes."

"You are getting married?!"

The smile persisted. "Yes."

The horror of sudden understanding lit up in the noble's wide-open eyes. "To an orc?!"

The smile did not disappear. "Yes."

"You are getting married to one of those filthy, uncouth, homicidal, untrustworthy… heathen beasts?!"

Imoen sighed. Anomen Delryn definitely belonged to a world where the word 'marriage' meant anything, and was not just a makeshift handle for the passing of a chattel from one individual to another in an attempt to fool the other side of a temporary truce.

Next to her, her brother was clearly astonished by the force of the surprise assault: for a split second, he wavered in a half-frown, before his brow smoothed out, his eyes glimmered, and he replied, utterly amused, "Yes."


	26. IV: Knights' Attack, 7

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**7**

"And I am to witness this blasphemy, Anchev?!"

The angry demand sounded almost like an afterthought to the real protest; and, only a day earlier, Anomen had been calling Sarevok himself a beast.

"If you wish, squire," her brother replied with brutal honesty.

Instead of taking him with himself in the guise of a slave—which was certainly a feasible and, perhaps, given the squire's unruly tongue, understandable option—Sarevok had furbished his squire with shining armour and, in passing, had called him a retainer.

"_Tell me something about yourself, brother."_

"_Why?"_

"_You know much more about me than I know about you."_

"_No."_

"_Tell me about Tamoko, Sarevok."_

"_Tamoko was… a hatamoto."_

"_A what?"_

"_A hatamoto, sister. A retainer."_

She had almost told him then, in Trademeet, what they had done to Tamoko; but, in the end, had refrained. Perhaps the woman was dead, now; and perhaps she had chosen to live, and perhaps she was even living a happy life, and did not need Sarevok Anchev, a future god, back in it.

And now, Sarevok—Sarevok might be happy as he fetched gifts worth a small house for his squire, but that did not take away from the fact that it should be Keldorn Firecam who should be overseeing the last steps of _his_ squire's passage into knighthood. And he had as much as promised to leave Anomen alone, and only try and make him someone who would survive long enough; but—

Her brother, who sometimes made people love him, and sometimes simply got to people, and had, in the end, gotten to her, had almost touched her. "Little sister?"

"I think, little brother, that we should go for the vampires now, without visiting the orcs first," she replied, shaking off the unpleasant, morally ambiguous thoughts she would not have to think if she weren't in his presence. "Altair can guard the horses."

He watched her closely, as if he had realised precisely what she had been thinking from her random, wandering looks now and her sharp, pointed comments and her random, absent comments earlier that day, when they had fitted Anomen's armour; and, in the end, said only, "As you wish, Imoen."

---

A small, colourful procession: three humans, two horses, an eagle and a cat, all moving slowly down a hot, sun-filled sandstone canyon towards a dark opening in its north-western wall. Of the men, one wore full plate armour, slightly tarnished, yet still serviceable; on his head, he had a glorious helm which had once belonged to Sir Tain the Noble, and which had found its way to his hands through, most improbably, an orc encampment; he had an enchanted mace by his side and bore a heirloom shield with a ring and a rhodelia in his right hand; and was, clearly, verily uncomfortable in the heat. But, were one to judge from the spring in his step, nonetheless happy.

The man in front wore bloodstained old gold and dark brown; for, like his sister, he had chosen to discard for the moment his cloak of shadows. There was a cruel blade strapped to his back; an Abyssal greensteel knife at his belt; an intricate tattoo on his forehead, above a pair of most inhuman eyes; and the feeling was that, when said eyes interrupted scanning the surroundings, it was just to look at them from the above, with an eagle's far, sharp sight.

There was an amused scowl on the man's face, for a day's practice had not yet been enough to master the technique of shifting one's perspective while in motion, and the man had only just stumbled and had barely recovered his balance in time to preserve his nigh-flawless, if rightfully sordid, image in the first man's eyes.

The woman, finally, wore light grey and light green under her rosy hair, her brown eyes and her two scars, one through the chin, one across the eye; she had a sword, a dagger, a quiver and a bow; and, just as on her brother's neck there glittered and glimmered a golden necklace, so did on her own glitter and glimmer the silver one which had once belonged to their sister. She smirked lightly, because, unlike the man in armour, she had noticed what misfortune had befallen her brother; and then, as she realised its cause, she frowned in the direction of her horse-riding cat. After all, within a few moments—

"A fair plan, Delryn," Sarevok was saying, "What of the scouting?"

"Surely my lady Imoen, even if invisible, cannot be expected to enter that place alone!" Anomen protested hotly. "And if she is to use her magic at ease, she must stand in the aft," he finished, and his brow must be frowning under his helmet.

"She will. The van, squire," Sarevok replied, picking up a sleeping Pangur by the scruff of his neck and presenting him to Anomen, "is the cat's task. She can see through his eyes," he explained, quite amused at the future paladin's surprise.

The dazed cat tried, affably, to scratch out his holder's own eyes; and the viability of the use of felids in warfare proved shortly a theme of much contention and dissent; yet, in the end, not half an hour later, Imoen was exploring the corridors of a ruined chapel for traps and enemies, even as her body stood behind the fighters, readying her magic and her bow alike.

---

Soft, furred pads on slim, quiet paws, stepping precisely on the toes, like a ballet dancer: hind paw in the place of forepaw, hind paw for forepaw. The pupils of sensitive eyes, widely dilated in the near complete darkness; ears, moving, listening on to whispers, murmurs, undertones; a nose and a mouth, several times superior to a human's, scenting; erect, alert whiskers, feeling for air currents, vibrations and eddies, speaking of obstructions in the path and of the prey's presence— A cat is hunting.

No good fighter becomes such without developing a feel for the surroundings, without extending one's awareness slightly outside one's own body—to the tip of one's sword; and then, yet slightly further on. Any fighter's mind would cave in under the amount of information reaching the simple cat's senses.

There was a movement in the shadows, and Pangur froze, intent, with one forepaw lifted.

**Shades.**

He stepped lightly over one defunct tripwire, slid under another; the stench of carrion carried over from beyond the corner.

**Ghouls. Ghasts.**

The acrid scent of embalming fluid.

**Mummies.**

The distant clatter of a restless set of bones.

**Skeletons.**

A distinct, intimately familiar smell: blood. The corridor widened into a slightly larger chamber, with opened caskets standing in a circle on the stained floor; Imoen told the invisible cat to stay put, and, with a bit of regret, returned to her own eyes and ears. "The corridor is guarded by shades. There is a trap on the other side; then, a turn; then, a room with all sorts of undead. I haven't seen the vampires, but there are open coffins."

"They will show," Sarevok said, with a cheerful undertone in his businesslike voice which none could mistake for anything but happiness at the thought of the impeding hecatomb. "Potions of clarity," he added, handing a small flask to Imoen, who knew, vaguely, that a vampire could charm or dominate its victim. "Orc-made, but they should work fine for humans," he finished, casting a lazy, resolutely incurious look in Anomen's direction.

A grimace of distaste crossed the squire's face, but he took the flask; drunk the contents; and, shortly, prayed.

His prayer was heard; and, for a moment, the siblings must avert their eyes. Helm's raw might was neither kind nor unkind, only terribly fair and honest; but seeing one's all imperfections in perfect detail, even when one is aware of them and refuses to pay any heed to them, is a fearsome and startling experience.

Sharp and bright against the light of day, the wave of sheer power settled on the party in a multitude of little flames, before fading suddenly: they could, again, see. The vampires' guardians: the masses of writhing shadows, and the foul, bloated bodies, and the tall, desiccated, pestilential corpses tightly wrapped in their bandages, and the skeletons; as the party moved slowly down the entrance corridor, Helm's divine touch repelled and disoriented them all, leaving them easy prey to Sarevok and Imoen.

Of the siblings, Imoen, at least, was grateful for it, for she had never fought a mummy or a shadow before, and was glad that in her first encounter, the undead were fatally disoriented; but, the feeling nagged her, the vampires—

She fired another flame arrow at a mummy, which promptly burst into flames, and took a quick look through Pangur's eyes. The cat, in his feline manner, had disregarded her order completely, and was now peeking curiously into one of the caskets. It was empty.

Down, Pangur! she thought firmly as her hands found an arrow in her quiver.

**Whadd'ya take me for? A dog?! **the cat snorted, and, demonstratively, jumped into the coffin, raising clouds of dust.

Absently, his mistress shot out the arrow, this time at the easy target of a ghoul, and cast a look over her shoulder, to see if no creature assailed the party from behind. Helm's blessing though it were, she was simply not used to the kind of fighting where the enemy did not fight back. It made her paranoid. It felt too easy. It was genuine, though; the party reached the chamber at the end of the corridor without a hurt.

This, Imoen could now see in the conjured light, was a columbarium; hence, perhaps, the skeletons. There were two corridors in the opposite wall, and the caskets, and the smell of blood, and a stained floor, and an angry invisible cat she would swear was now all grey, without his rosy points; but still no vampires.

"Show yourselves," fed up, she demanded aloud at last, when the cursory check was over.

"We know that you are here," Sarevok added, lightly growling, scanning the ceiling.

"Foul leeches! Have you no courage to face us?!" Anomen, now bathed only in the afterglow of his holy aura, but with his mace in hand, finished.

A flapping followed, of a great multitude of leathery wings which completely eclipsed the light conjured by Imoen and the light of her brother's eyes; when it finished, the vampires were finally there.

One stood in the entrance through which the party had come: dressed in a noble, black and silver garb, and possessed of waist-long, shiny black hair, he looked clearly the eldest and the leader of the five. He was pale, predatory, and he carried himself proudly; and he stank much more than all the others.

He had with him a pair of who must have been middle-aged men while still human, one clad in a casual garb, the other in a mage's robe; Anomen jerked lightly at the latter's sight. The last two of the spawn stood across the chamber, in the openings to the side corridors; these, in turn, had the looks of young humans, and twins: a teenage boy and a girl.

"Lassal," Sarevok said to him civilly; and then, over a stifled cry of, "You know this—?!", "You must really have fallen out of your mistress' favour if she sent you here."

"Mook is dead," the vampire replied. He had a pleasant voice.

Sarevok shrugged. "She is. Or she is not. We live in an age of wonders, Lassal, and resurrection is possible. You are to tell me something."

"Mistress Bodhi awaits you," Lassal said, expectantly.

"I will meet her," the man replied, surprising the vampire, before adding, "Is that all? Then, I believe, it is time to kill the messenger."

---

Slaying a vampire is no easy matter; in a rapid, upward jerk, Sarevok skewered the one in the mage robe on the Chaos Edge, only to have him dissolve into mist and disappear in the shadow of the grave.

Anomen, in a laudable fit of inspiration, had been murmuring his prayers already when Sarevok and Lassal had been speaking, and was now, Imoen understood, for the moment protected from the vampires' life-draining touch. That left only her, who must get out of the trap as soon as possible, and pelt the vampires from afar with arrows and magic.

It had taken some effort of the squire, she understood further, to forego his immediate instincts, and protect himself instead of her first; she was glad that, since he had worked that out himself, he had not forgotten this in the heat of battle. He was much slower than she, after all, and he could not make himself invisible.

She ran through the gap left after the wizard; ran past Lassal, now hissing, growling and apparently trying to claw out Sarevok's heart; ran a little bit up the entrance corridor; started to cast Melf's Minute Meteors—

The mêlée was not glorious, even though Anomen Delryn would say so later; it was tiring, and tedious, and entirely devoid of scintillating tactics to be studied for generations to come; and the only reason why a body might ever find it worth of notice is that Imoen of Candlekeep almost lost her life in it.

The wizard was, perhaps, the reason of it: once incarnate again, he cast a spell of lightning bolt in the closed quarters, for vampires barely need fear lightning, and humans, a lot. The lightning bounced from the recessed walls of the burial vault in a dervish's mad dance; Sarevok, snarling, pulled his armoured squire down to the ground, below the level at which the dance took place, and started to cast a spell; Imoen decided to move into the fray.

On hands and knees, hiding herself behind a corner as she best could, and started to throw at the mage the third or fourth round of the small fiery balls she had summoned during the fight. The first few minute meteors, to her surprise, returned to her, burning her and bruising her; then, as she was to give up, she started to hit her target; and, promptly, the weakened vampire vanished again, and this time, the wisp of mist headed for one of the coffins in the middle of the room.

Pangur, peeping carefully over the edge of the casket, hissed, **Watch out!**

When the last vampire still fighting grabbed her from behind, she threw the last of her minuscule meteors straight into its middle-aged man's face. The men came to help her, soon, and, together, they all managed to tear the creature off her and destroy it: Anomen fairly crushed its head, forcing it to try and return into its coffin. But the black hole was already there.

The black hole was just that: utter nothingness, a piece of her self, missing. Not coldness, the likes of which she experienced whenever her other self emerged; simply… lack. Lack of memory; lack of expertise—her fingers suddenly felt clumsy and unskilled, and when she tried to think of a single cantrip, any single cantrip, it was all simply gone; and some other, less definable lack— If one insisted on finding a comparison, it felt like some parts of her memory after Irenicus' torture had.

She shivered. Irenicus had a sister, and her name was Bodhi.

She kept on shivering, rolled into a ball on the floor in her corner of the dark passage; there was nothing she wanted more than to stay there, curled up like this, and die.

---

"Apparently, my sister nobly decided to die and spare us the fighting of a dragon," a coldly furious voice was saying as a small, warm, mute body climbed into her lap and started to nudge her chin with its head and lick off her tears with a rough, grate-like tongue. "Take her and the cat outside, Delryn, and make sure that she properly peruses the scroll. I can stake the vampires myself."

A few moments of being chivalrously, apologetically carried out of the grave into the sun followed; then, a few moments of reading a scroll and feeling the blessing contained in it—what had the priest said? That, since no one knew where Waukeen was, they were taking power from Lliira?—and then, a great tiredness. The hole had been filled, stoppered slowly, painstakingly; but now—

"Now, you ought to rest, my lady," Anomen Delryn was saying. "You look better, already, 'tis true, but—"

"No," Imoen yawned. "You managed, yesterday. And I was silly. We almost had them all already as it was—"

**Heya. Fine again, I see? Good.**

Pangur was now visible again, and meticulously washing the dust off his fur. He cast a lazy, unconcerned look in her direction, and returned to his task.

"Forgive me, my lady, but you really would do well to rest for a while," Anomen repeated. "And I ought to aid your brother."

"Sure," she replied, suddenly realising that the squire wanted to get up and do something with each and every earnest pore of his skin, and that only his politeness kept him by her side. "I get it, Anomen. Go."

Anomen stood up and, remorsefully, left her alone with a cat; and, for a moment, and feeling utterly childish for feeling that, because she would do exactly the same in his place, she wished that adventurers were not nearly so damned practical.

I nearly died here, you know, she complained to the world in general.

**Chick's worried 'bout ya, y'know**, she heard in her thoughts, and sighed. At least the fellow female understood what she felt.

Then, vaguely wondering how Pangur could tell this time, she fell into a brief doze.

---

Male voices, reaching her through the haze of dream. "You know who that wizard was."

"Aye, that I do. He was Firkraag's minion. The one who brought Sir Keldorn and us here yesterday."

"I thought so. I also found this by the one which nearly got Imoen; it appears that you were correct, squire. He used to be Windspear, and the other two fledglings must have been his children. Is there, by the way, any connection between the name and the fee?"

"Garren Windspear was the previous title-holder of these lands," Anomen replied angrily. "And, knowing Firkraag's methods, 'tis verily hard for me to stay the doubt that he was swindled out of them."

"The dragon is cutting the loose ends, then. He let Lassal take the wizard in exchange for getting rid of the contenders to the fief, or a similar service— Keep the ring, Delryn. It is enchanted against fire."

"I truly cannot—"

"You earned it. Now, stop blushing, and tell me: the Lord Delryn is a baronet, is he not? And landless?"

"In truth…"

"Stop blushing, Delryn. It really does not become you. You were, perhaps, about to tell me that you are landless merchants ennobled two or three generations ago, were you not?"

"Aye. 'Tis the truth. And my lord Delryn is, rightly, only a baronet."

"My foster father bought his own title, Delryn. Even if I still bore it, I would have nothing over you in that regard— However, what occurs to me is that, under the circumstances, the slayer of the dragon will be fully entitled to assume the mantle of the Windspear barony."

There was a prolonging silence. "'Tis… I would rather not speak of it till the wyrm is dead. But if my lady Imoen wishes the title, then I swear on— I swear that I shan't stand in her path."

"Should she wish the title, Delryn, you must do more: she is neither Amnish nor noble, and has no one to represent her before the courts. Should she not, the land should follow the signet. Keep it."

What followed was an extremely complicated silence, and Imoen considered waking up, when she heard a brief noise; and then, her brother spoke up again. This time, he was audibly amused.

"Alas, poor Lassal. I knew him well."

Anomen, clearly thankful for the end of the silence, asked, "You did?"

Sarevok laughed lightly. "No. Not really. He escaped me once and killed one of my people, but I hardly think that makes us blood brothers. He gave a good fight, though."

"'Twas a glorious fight!" Anomen said fervently.

Another light laugh. "If you say so, squire. And, in any case… The wedding gift is arranged. It is time to marry."

"Must you?"

There was a brief silence, followed by a dry, "Apparently, I must."

Another silence; and then, Sarevok asked, amiably, "By the way, have you decided, Delryn? Shall you be my best man?"

"I—" A deep breath. "I refuse to go among the orcs."

The rejoinder was rather bored. "Haven't we discussed this already? You agreed, if I remember correctly."

"'Twas hardly a discussion," Anomen muttered rebelliously.

"A fair point," Sarevok said, and there was a bit of noise, as he must be making himself more comfortable. "Why don't you want to go among the orcs, squire?"

"Because—" There was a deep sigh. "They are orcs."

"And so, you will have the rare opportunity to study your natural enemy in its natural environment. It should come of use to you in your future career, paladin— As some genius of an Easterner said, 'So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win hundred times in hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.' Is there no line to the same effect in your own dogma, squire?"

Another deep sigh. "Aye. 'Know your foe.'" Then, after a brief silence, a surprised, "You know the holy creed, Anchev?"

"Following the selfsame principle," Sarevok replied smugly; then, more seriously, "The Easterner was, by the way, spot on, squire. That is why, when we now go to meet the orcs and I marry, you, Delryn, will stand, wait, and watch carefully to observe as much of their life as you can."

"It will not be long now," he added, almost gently. "We shall part tomorrow, squire. And by then, you will have regained your honour and gained all the glory which befits a dragon slayer."

"I don't—"

"But you do," the Bhaalspawn interrupted firmly; then, in a few steps, he moved to Imoen, knelt by her, and said, "Little sister. You have been awake for ten minutes at least. Shall we?"

---

Among the orcs, women are property.

Among the orcs, women are property, child-bearers and chattel, to be possessed, bought and sold; and since the orcs have no respect for their dim, foul females, they see no reason to hold any for those of any other race; for the orcs, as any other race, believe that any other race is inferior to their own.

The speaker of these words had been an elf, and elves bear no kind feelings towards orcs; and that one elf, in particular, had even less reason to do so. Kivan had, perhaps, never told Imoen what Tazok had exactly done to Deheriana, judging that too gruesome a tale for the ears of a barely grown-up human; or, perhaps, he had. Perhaps, once, drunk, infuriated by an attempt to cheer his spirits with a word or a jest too many, he had told her exactly and in very particular detail what precisely Tazok had done to his lover.

The drow are much like the orcs, he had remarked on another occasion, gazing in the direction of a drow who would, one day, become Imoen's enemy. _Oloth dos!_ she had replied, Wash your mouth, darthiir! The drow's cruelty, like the drow, is sophisticated and elegant, perfected through millennia of unbroken exercise; the orcs' is like the orcs themselves: mundane, trivial and uncouth. I should flail you for just speaking of the two in the same sentence, jaluk—You can wish, Viconia. You can wish.

And Imoen had then thought that elegance is no excuse for evil, even though elegant evil holds much allure for some humans; for humans love beautiful things, and are willing to excuse much, be it only beautifully presented and performed. But she had remembered that instance as the only one when Kivan and Viconia had agreed on any single subject; and she even remembered it now, when so much else was gone.

Among the orcs, Sarevok felt like fish in water.

He couldn't be marrying _à la orc_ for the first time; he knew too well how to do it; his sister didn't want to know how many corpses of his previous monstrous brides had littered the landscape whilst the nobles in Baldur's Gate had thought of pawning off their daughters to him.

This particular orc bride… existed. There wasn't much more to be told of her.

They entered the orc caves together with the horses; the inside was dark and malodorous, filled with the stench of sweat and grease. They passed through a bottleneck into a larger cavern; there were side passages to the left and right, but they headed straight for the centre, where there was a fire and stone benches around the fire, separated from the rest of the place by a ring of standing stones and totems.

To the left and right, there were orcs, mulling about, watching them either askew, suspiciously or with open hatred and contempt: porcine faces, greyish-green skin, red eyes, an armoury of bared weaponry, grunts and snarls and barks and open threats. Sarevok was as tall and as threatening as he might possibly be without reaching to his divine powers, golden, proud and challenging like the eagle on his hand; Imoen, with her own familiar on her shoulder, found herself, prosaically, surreptitiously counting the enemies. Between her, and Anomen, and what she saw through Pangur's eyes, and what her brother saw through Altair's eyes, they should soon have a fairly good estimate of their numbers.

She did not have to be told that she must know her enemies; she had learnt that herself through countless trials and errors, sometimes on time, sometimes almost too late; one of them had been when she had infiltrated her brother's own camp of cutthroats.

There were five or six orcs around the central fire, some sitting, some afoot, shamans and warriors alike; the one who came out to meet them was an old male, hunched and ritually scarred and with a necklace of skulls over a leather armour laced with hundreds of fire hardened bones; and, in his hand, a club which looked like nothing but a femur. The one who stood by him must be the bride herself; the first female Imoen had seen thus far in this place.

She was not fully orc, and that, perhaps, explained why Dig Dag was willing to give her over to a mere human; her face was more human than orcish in shape, even if her hair was black and coarse, her skin was green, her ears were lupine and she had a jutting jaw with boar-like tusks; she was tall and muscular and dressed in skins and rags. Anomen shot her a look of immediate dislike; Sarevok paid her no attention.

The orc barked out something at the man in his own tongue; the man replied, in the same language and tone; and then added something much longer, something which sounded like a clear challenge. (He must be asking why we weren't told about the wizard, Imoen thought.) The orc growled and threatened, and let his club be much better seen; the man laughed, released Altair into the air and said something which immediately relieved the orc's tension. Then, he took a bag from Anomen, and presented Lassal's long-haired head to Dig Dag.

The orc examined it and barked out a question. (Why haven't we brought them all? Imoen decided.) Sarevok folded his arms and fired off a curt answer. (Go and see for yourself that they are all dead. They were: in their dealing with the vampires, Anomen and Sarevok had been nothing if not meticulous. Since staking a vampire is temporary measure at best, they had taken the staked bodies out of the grave and set them in as deep a spot of the stream as they found; and in the sun. And _then_ cut the heads off.)

In the present, Dig Dag must be satisfied with both his gift and his future son-in-law's impudence; he snarled, and an orc took away the head; another snarl, and two horns were brought, filled to the brim with some strong alcohol which made Imoen's eyes water with its very smell.

She sighed, internally. Wine was one thing; but she'd really prefer her brother to lay off this sort of spirits. It could not be good for him, even if he, as he demonstrated at present, could, indeed, drink it all in one go.

He finished; he threw the empty horn on the floor; he looked critically at his father-in-law, who finished, too, and laughed heartily, and pushed his daughter, who was watching the whole exchange with an expression Imoen could not decipher at all, in her newlywed husband's direction; then, he must have called Altair to him, for there was the sound of her wings, and the eagle settled before the female orc.

This could not be a usual part of the proceedings; the female gazed, rather alarmed, at her chief, who, in turn, again seemed on the point of ordering his people to attack the humans. Sarevok growled out something, and there was another collective relieving of tension as the she-orc approached the eagle, and took from her talons a necklace with a pendant, to put it on her own neck.

Imoen wondered where Sarevok had found the necklace—most probably, on the neck of another vampire when he had handled the bodies; but already the eagle, with a cry, soared above the heads of all present; Sarevok barked a short, unkind command in his wife's direction, and threw the reins of the horses to her. And then, as she took them, and left off, and departed the scene, with Altair following her, he, as though nothing had just happened, turned, again, to Dig Dag.

There was another brief exchange, growled and barked and snarled in the orcs' coarse tongue; and, presently, another orc was called, who led them out of the circle of stones and totems, and through this cave and that cave, until, at last, he showed them a portal, ornate in the flickering torchlight.

Beyond, there was darkness.

"The entrance to the maze," Sarevok said calmly.


	27. IV: Knights' Attack, 8

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**8**

It is not given to many to meet a Child of Bhaal and escape unscathed.

The Children bring death, destruction and chaos with them wherever they go, to those they love, those they hate, and those they do not care for, alike; whether they wish it or not; such is their cruel fate and their lot in life. And while death, destruction and chaos are sometimes useful and necessary, more often than not, they are not.

Anomen Delryn, over the two days he had spent thus far in the company of Bhaalspawn, had been tied, charmed, beaten, teased and taunted; gifted, tried, tested, forced to speak, listened to, heard, and, finally, accepted and trusted with the future well-being of a sister. To say that his mind was in chaos would be to grossly devalue the severity of his predicament.

To find one's mind, seek one's roots; hence, let us draw on the relative lull in the tale, as the Children of Bhaal and their companion walk through the maze of the burial chambers of a long-dead king, and examine the past of the heir to the House Delryn.

He had grown up in the tender care of a Helmite mother, the presence of a younger, beautiful and thoroughly accomplished sister, and the almost complete absence of his merchant father, who believed that Anomen was a bastard.

There had not been much evidence for that—the mother, as said, had been a Helmite before she died when Anomen was thirteen; and what manner of a Helmite would cheat on her husband? But the Lord Delryn, as Anomen had learnt shortly and definitely before the Lady Moirala's death, had himself no compunctions against trysts with wenches and harlots; and, to such a man, casting unfounded suspicions on an honest innocent comes ever so easy.

The only truth was in that Anomen shared neither his mother's nor his father's colours; and in that, whilst the father had a merchant's mind, filled with numbers, sums, and subtractions, the boy's was filled with his mother's tales of the accomplishments of her own ancestors the Wessalens: of fights, and battles, and honour and glory. He had no skill in business, only in combat; all unlike Moira, who had her father's dark eyes and hair, his head, good for arithmetic, his intent dislike for weaponry, and his favour. The siblings loved each other, nonetheless; and it was to Moira, though she was the younger one, that Anomen would go to after an argument with his father.

By his fourteenth birthday, Anomen had already learnt the simple truth: he would never be good enough for his father, he, with his stain of possible illegitimacy, his crudeness, his clumsiness around the ladies he did not know—and that, having been raised among women!—his lack of a skilled merchant's tongue and his inherent hatred of duplicity; a hatred so much greater for the constancy with which he must not tell the truth of what he thought. At times, he would burst out in anger and would speak out his mind, against all his better judgment; and this made him ever so more of a bumbling fool. "You're worrying too much. You're just like everyone else," Moira would say, smiling; he would smile back, the way he had learnt to smile, just as he had learnt to carefully edit the truth, until the next outburst of anger. He was not like everyone else. He was, at most, pretending to be like everyone else, and, sooner or later, would be revealed as a pretender.

On his fifteenth birthday, the Lord Delryn made the only ever overture in his son's direction: he invited him to one of his assignations with low-born ladies of ill repute. Anomen refused; his father rejoined with certain allegations about his son, women and, especially, men, which shook said son to the core. Given that that bastard will not have an heir, the Lord Delryn said, I may as well disown him; it was only Moira's intervention which prevented him from carrying out the threat. In fact, Moira asked, begged and pled until she made her father swear that he would never disinherit her brother. (She claimed that she might need Anomen as a figurehead for her business when she would take over; this was what in the end convinced the Lord Delryn.)

At an age as early as possible, for the purpose of the preservation of familial bliss, Anomen joined the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart. Once there, he found out that, since on his father's side, his family had been nobles for two generations only, he was a parvenu; blithely, he let it be revealed that he was not skilled in the dance; but, worst of all, he relaxed and started to speak out his mind, instead of saying the things he supposed he should say. Shortly, the impression that he was different, and out of his proper place, returned; and so did the time-honoured practice of doublespeak. He needed it to fit in among his peers; and he wanted to fit in among his peers, to hide himself, and pass as one who saw things clearly. The irony was not lost on him.

He also prayed; and his prayers were answered; but Helm's powers being what they are, and unkind to all imperfection, Anomen Delryn left his prayers with a heart as heavy as he entered them. He strove for honour, yet he never caught it; he had all the fighting skill, but none of the true paladin's conviction. He had been chosen as Lord Firecam's squire; he wished to ask for guidance: how does one believe in the words one speaks? How does one become the knight of whom one is the image? How does the image become the self, and the words the truth? How does one hide well enough that one is never revealed as a dirty fake and a bastard, a cuckoo's egg and a pretender? But, in speaking these words, he would have revealed himself— And, whatever question he managed to stutter out, the answer was the same as Moira's. He worried too much. He was doing well. Very well, indeed.

Ajantis was knighted, and Anomen was jealous, although he knew he should not be, but should, instead, be happy for his coeval's happiness. Then, Moira was killed, and his father told him that he would not disown him, but that he should have been at home to protect his sister, and that, if Anomen was thinking that he would rise any in the Lord Delryn's esteem now that the two of them were left alone and to themselves, he was mistaken. Greatly so. Because justice had been served, but Moira was dead, and that was Anomen's fault. And Anomen, though he knew that this was what he would hear, still felt bad; because, in a part of his heart, he had hoped, timidly, that it would not be.

And now, Anomen had no honour to strive for, which was just what he had always suspected, and the revelation of which made him… light on the heart. He had made as much of a fool of himself as he could have, and had spoken out his mind, and had been revealed as a fake, and still he had not been rejected. And he had been told that whatever he thought, and said, and whom he esteemed, was his own matter. All that was required of him was that he fight, and that he find a lawyer to represent a sister. That was easy. The Delryn solicitor was a good one.

He was in the company of a fellow bastard, and, with some guilt and shame, though that one was a murderer, he did not want to leave it. He was— He had been accepted.

Except that, tomorrow, they would part. And there was also the… the other matter.

For now, however, he was praying fervently for a life.

---

It was too tight and too dark for Imoen to try and shoot an arrow and hope not to hit the men. And all the magic she had had had been lost in the black hole of drained life. She watched, instead.

A narrow corridor, lit by nothing by the small globe of a conjured light under the ceiling; the light reflected off Anomen's armour as Sarevok and he were fighting the dark, wraithlike creature which had appeared suddenly from beyond the corner.

The creature put up a red shield of fire; and, a few moments and a few hits later, exploded into a brilliant fireball which raced down the hallway in Imoen's own direction. The wizard found herself on the ground, over Pangur, before she realised it.

Before her, Anomen, behind his shield, protected by his ring, yelled in pain; Sarevok, preternaturally, managed a half-turn and a half-fall to protect his face from the full impact of the explosion. So this was one of the special guardians of Strohm's tomb, Imoen thought as she ran to her brother across the still-hot floor. Sarevok was still alive; his clothes had been enchanted, and, mostly, held; his burns were terrifying.

The maze was absolutely beautiful, with corridors of bas-reliefs and murals showing, presumably, the feats of the deceased king: he had slain a red dragon. He had been a fair judge, a good husband to his wives, and a great warrior and ruler who had collected tribute from many lands; his rule had been a time of plenty and had been utterly devoid of plagues; or so it was painted. There were explanations in the cartouches next to the murals, but there were no runes Imoen recognised.

The maze was also preposterously dangerous. There were false doors, and illusions, and traps, and pitfalls, and guardian golems of clay, stone and iron which activated in certain rooms; and now, these special guardians Firkraag had, supposedly, told the orcs about, and the orcs had, supposedly, told Sarevok about. According to Imoen's makeshift map, the party must, indeed, be nearing the heart of the labyrinth.

Anomen was praying to heal Sarevok, fervently; and his prayer was being heard; meanwhile, Imoen wondered. It occurred to her, namely, that her brother had an insidious mind; that she had not seen Firkraag write the note Sarevok had delivered to her; and that the party did gain something off this eerie detour. Not she, personally—save the acrid taste of helplessness, she gained nothing: without her magic, she disarmed the traps, and scouted, and fired the occasional arrow, and, while once it would have been enough, now it was not. But Anomen and Sarevok were learning to fight in tandem; and that was as much practice as they could get in the half a day they had at their disposal; and, without that note, even if Anomen had entered the maze, he would have been probably terminally ashamed and guilty at having so much fun diligently crushing guardian golems into smithereens.

And Sarevok—Sarevok had, of course, killed the insane Kara-Turan swordsmith who had created the Edge of Chaos. The man had begged him to test the _meitou_'s sharpness on his body, claiming that since he would never manage to forge its equal, he had lost all reason for living, her brother had told her when he had shown her the runes of Muramasa Sengo's name near the sword's hilt; this was how Sarevok had learnt what the tradition of a _kirisute_ was. But if the smith had lived, he would have now despaired at the use to which his hands' child had been put while fighting the soft clay golems which were so hard to penetrate with a blade: Sarevok, merrily, had grabbed the sword by the blunt part of the edge near the hilt, and started to pummel the golems with the pommel— Imoen only hoped he would manage to clean it later.

Now, her brother was waking in the stale, suffocating air of close quarters which had not been exposed for centuries, in the odour of sweat and burnt flesh and residual heat after the spell. The squire was crouching by him in an utterly uncomfortable position, which must be the best he could assume in his armour; he had his helm off, a smudge of blackness across his mouth and the woeful, desperate eyes of someone who had just laid his soul bare open, and was now expecting it to be thoroughly maimed and ground into dust as the submission was rejected.

Imoen cursed, privately; and then, as golden light flowed when her brother opened his own eyes, encountered the squire's, and promptly measured him critically, she said, with feeling, in case he had missed it, "Brother. You are an arrogant jerk and a failure."

"Water?" Sarevok put forward, tentatively; accepted the flask offered to him by the squire; then, after he gargled his mouth and swallowed, he said thoughtfully, "The classical explanation, sister, would, I believe, point to the fact that I am only a demihuman. And that the creators of this tomb had not been mindful enough to advertise their security measures," he added, belatedly, changing the topic.

"You are making excuses," Imoen said wondrously. "Are you allowed to make excuses?"

"I said explanation, sister, not excuse," her brother retorted; then, at last, looked at the squire again. "Delryn, I believe that I am in your and in your god's debt? When you pray to him next time, ask him what he wants of me in return. You have not healed yourself," he added, as Anomen opened his mouth. "Do so. Your cat is guarding us, I presume, sister?"

"Yes, he is," Imoen replied acerbically, casting a particularly meaningful look at the squire. "We are low on components," she lied helpfully.

"We are," Sarevok repeated flatly; he must be still dazed, she thought, because a fairly long moment passed before he said, "Squire. Can you bother your god once more on my account?"

"To ask Him to shield you against fire?" Anomen asked, with sudden, badly hidden enthusiasm. "Aye. I can— I shall."

The other man studied him meticulously once again. "Then do so, squire."

Then, he laid his head against the sandstone wall of the passage and closed his eyes; and would have perhaps sighed, if he were not in company.

Instead, he said only, "It will not be long now."

---

It was not long, though they had to destroys several more guardians on the way; and the burial chamber was beautiful—or, at least, as beautiful as a burial chamber can be when one does not have much light to see it. The entrance had been sealed; inside, once the dust fell, there was nothing save paintings, and sculptures, and a sarcophagus in the middle. Perhaps Strohm III had been good enough a king not to take his riches into the grave with him; or, perhaps, the grave had been robbed and then resealed by its own constructors.

There was a skeleton under the heavy leaden lid, dressed in dark, ceremonial armour, with a helm of red, white and green scales on his skull: a tricolour uraeus of a dragon with outspread wings. There was also a sheathed sword, and a shield: the shield was of red skin, with a pattern of green and white scales which, together, formed the face of another dragon. Sarevok, curious, pulled the sword out of its scarlet sheath: it was long, sharp, red and much like a claw, and with a hilt made to look as if it had been made of extremely tiny scales. It was easy to see why a dragon might take offence at all three; and especially so if the scales had been genuine, and dragons', as they probably were.

Anomen was visibly queasy at the thought of the sacrilege; Imoen decided not to placate him with any false comfort, and said, instead, "Let's take what we must and leave."

"Aye, my lady," the squire sighed, watching, mesmerised, the inside of the tomb. "I cannot say that this grave-robbing sits well with me."

"Yes," Imoen said. There was nothing to add, really.

Looking at her brother, who was still amusing himself with the dragon-slaying sword, she hoped, for everyone's sake, that Firkraag's message had been genuine.

---

There is no time within a grave. The backtracking through the maze took much less of it than the search for the maze's heart; even so, Imoen could not tell if it would be evening or night when they would get to the territory of the Stuck in Craw again.

"Grasshopper and Deneb are unharmed, I believe," Sarevok said suddenly, breaking the silence of the tired party's march. "I told Dig Dag that Altair and I would be keeping an eye on them. He would not have decided to search through the effects, for fear of alerting us to his intent."

"Not that we don't know it," Imoen said, wearisome. _"Jal khaless zhah waela."_

"My lady?" Anomen stirred.

"I didn't know you spoke drow, sister," an equally surprised Sarevok added.

"I don't," Imoen replied, turning the corner into the corridor which, after several further twists and turns, would take them straight to the clan's territory. "And I didn't know you spoke orc—"

She was shot at at that moment; she ducked; a surprised Pangur started on her shoulder and scampered down her back and between the men's legs, followed, closely, by Imoen herself. There was an arrow where she had been a moment before.

There was an enraged orc snarling and barking behind the corner, as the hasty archer was scolded by his commander; then, some incantations as blessings must prayed for; in the meantime, on the human's side, Anomen was chanting, Sarevok was casting a spell, and Imoen was dipping the tips of her arrows in poison.

There was a brief pause as Sarevok, now protected against not enchanted weapons, looked behind the corner and cast another spell. The effects were almost comical: amidst a sudden chorus of porcine wails, some orcs dropped their weapons; others sat down on the ground and covered their lupine ears and their red, beady eyes; yet others, in their hopelessness, started to snivel and cry, in large, hot tears. Only a few had been strong enough to resist the spell; and it was from them, once the humans got to the orcs, that the slaughter began.

The throat-cutting was, perhaps, more murder than killing, because, for the second time that particular day, Imoen faced an enemy who did not resist; and this time, her enemy, though orc, was alive. For certain, the feel of cold, ruthless purpose was there, creeping just under her skin; a potential begging and pleading to be used. She did not need it for now; she remembered what the thunder had said— _Datta; dayadhvam; damyata. Damyata._ Control. There was no sympathy in her for the orcs, but that much, she could stay in control of herself. Even if Anomen Delryn was looking at both Sarevok and her slightly… oddly; that is, when he was not occupied with either the killing or the murder himself.

The ambush of some twenty orcs was felled within minutes; the chieftain, Dig Dag, was not with them. "He will not have moved from the elders' circle," Sarevok replied to Anomen's question, shaking blood off his private blade. "This way, in case of failure, he can pretend that this was licence."

The squire—red-cheeked not from a blush, but from exertion—snorted contemptuously. "A spineless coward, just like every other orc."

Sarevok looked at him with clear amusement; and said nothing.

---

They moved slowly out of the maze into the clan's grounds; and, shortly, they started to find the bodies. They were freshly dead—the blood barely started to congeal—and there were not many of them, not for the size of the clan. And, apart from the bodies, there were no orcs.

"They are gone," Imoen, poisoned arrow on bow, reported, perplexed, after she peeked into several nearby side passages. All the equipment, save the orcs' dirty, untended weaponry, was there, intact; even the totems. But there were no inhabitants.

"They have fled before us!" Anomen declared triumphantly.

"Or, possibly, they are preparing another ambush, squire," Sarevok added casually, curbing immediately the other young man's enthusiasm. "Sister? Shall we proceed?"

They proceeded, through malodorous, deserted caves lit by torchlight; and, in the end, entered the main cavern again. It, too, was empty, save for a single figure kneeling by the central fire, within the ring of stones: Sarevok's bride, kneeling by the headless body of her chieftain and father.

She had almost finished taking off his armour; Imoen looked away. An almost naked orc was a much worse sight than a fully clothed one.

Sarevok growled out a question, lightly; the half-orc froze; looked up at him with pure terror in her eyes; lowered them, and started to spew out words, quickly.

Imoen's brother, half-frowning, half-scowling, listened to the torrent; gradually, his face smoothed out; at last, he smirked. "She says," he said when the half-orc finished, and Altair flew to him from a side corridor, greeting him with a happy cry of reunion before settling on the ground, near Pangur, "that a group of young males, led by a Derg and a Flaylan, decided to exploit the absence of the strongest warriors, and take over the control of the clan. They told her to wait for us and tell us that they won't stand between," the smirk became, in Imoen's opinion, unbearably full of itself, "the Son of Murder and his dragon. They won't fight for us; they won't fight for Firkraag, either; and they had no intent to die for Dig Dag. They are off to the werewolves' caves, and will stay put tomorrow."

"And she?" Imoen asked, pointing at the woman, who had, in the meantime, calmly resumed her gruesome task.

Sarevok shrugged. "She is mine, and a half-orc. They didn't want to kill her, in case I wanted her. And they certainly wouldn't fight me for her."

"And—I mean. Her—father, brother?"

Another shrug. "She killed him herself, sister. I do not believe that any condolences are in order."

"What?" Anomen demanded, incredulously. "Are you telling us, Anchev, that that—that—that orc—that it was she who—who lopped that swine's head off?!" He looked in the direction of the green-skinned creature on the floor with an expression which clearly could not decide whether it was supposed to be approval or condemnation, and ended up being utter confusion.

Sarevok watched him calmly. "Unlike Derg or Flaylan, she could get near her father in a secluded place with a naked sword. No one pays attention to orc females, squire."

A certain nasty suspicion suddenly occurred to his sister; and so, she asked, "That's why you told them to do it like this, isn't it?"

"Yes," her brother replied, quite amused; before, suddenly, casting a fairly alarmed look in his squire's direction. "Try to understand, Delryn," he said, matter-of-factly, as Anomen returned the look with something which was still very much confusion, but was quickly turning into a feeling of righteous betrayal, "The alternative would be to kill off the whole clan. We are after half a day of continuous fighting, which is what Dig Dag was counting on; and," here, Sarevok fairly snarled, "I am not versed enough in your Order's internal policy to know its stance on killing orc children."

There was a moment of silence, during which Imoen's brother set his bag on the ground, sat on the closest stone bench, rubbed his eyes and yawned; then, he barked something at the half-orc. She gave no hint that she heard him; but she lifted the headless corpse and, circling carefully the eagle and the cat, carried it out of the elders' circle, leaving behind only Dig Dag's armour. The glittering among the rags she wore must be the rubies and emeralds adorning the sheath of Sarevok's Calishite scimitar, the woman watching her understood suddenly; the man had had another gift for his bride.

"What if we had killed only the men?" Anomen, meanwhile, asked slowly.

"Orc females, Delryn, are entirely dependent on their men, for sustenance and otherwise," Sarevok rejoined, suddenly amused, "I would not that you suffered remorse when you finally decided to apply yourself to the study of your enemy."

"As matters stand, squire," he concluded, businesslike again; perhaps, again, because he saw the teased squire's unhappy face—"we have a cover low enough that a dragon will not assail us in our sleep. And Flaylan and Derg have a harem to think of instead of attacking us."

"And she is a patricide," Anomen retorted, steering unhappily and unerringly towards the reef against which the sea of muddled reasoning broke.

"That, among the orcs— If it eases your conscience, squire," Sarevok said, "she had no choice. I ordered her to do it—" (The necklace, Imoen thought; and—Altair? How?) "—and, as I said, orc females obey their husbands. Most really are incapable, by the way," he added as the look on the squire's face announced clearly that no, this revelation had not eased his conscience; at all. "Gudrun is an exception; I asked Dig Dag for a bride with enough wits that she would go with us tomorrow… It was a fortunate coincidence that she also was one who had a better than average reason to hate her father," he added pensively, before looking up at Anomen again. "She is, as I believe I have also already mentioned, half-human."

The squire's eyes widened as he finally heard openly that which he had, perhaps, refused to realise before; shortly, he sighed, deeply and wistfully, and with lowered head. "'Tis— I understand it all, Anchev, but— I must think of it," he pled, almost.

Sarevok shrugged again. "Then do, squire," he replied lightly.

At this final guise of charitable nobility, Imoen, calmly furious, decided to interfere at last. "So, your wife is called Gudrun, brother?" she asked, seating herself across the fire. "Perhaps, now that she's to be a half-human, we should rechristen her Kriemhild."

Gudrun—or Kriemhild—returned at that precise moment, with a tray with three cups of something hot and steaming; her husband asked, casually, taking one of them, "What do you mean by that, sister?"

"You know very well what I mean by that, brother," his sister replied viciously, refusing her own. "I grew up in Candlekeep, remember. There were books there. Not only catacombs to invade."

The squire was now watching the siblings with an utterly bemused expression; and Sarevok said, frigidly, without taking his eyes off Imoen, "My sister and I must speak alone, squire. You are still in armour; if you are not tired, and," a thoroughly unpleasant smile, "my wife fits her own equipment, would you spar with her? If you are, I will have her show you around."

It was, perhaps, a mark of the current chaos in Anomen Delryn's mind that, seeing the muscular, green-skinned and boar-tusked patricide timidly offering him refreshments, and hearing her husband's request, he recoiled only slightly; then, clenched his teeth, took a cup, said smartly, "Thank you, my lady," drank the hot, bitter brew within the cup, yet without overly grimacing; and finally, mustering all the knightly courage and chivalrous gallantry at his disposal, declared, "'Twill be a pleasure to assist the Lady Anchev in her training."

There was another moment of brief hesitation upon seeing the Chieftain Dig Dag's leather armour laced with fire-hardened bones instead of studs, as, in the background, Sarevok took out the dead king Strohm's helm, shield and dragon-slaying sword, and barked and snarled very precise orders at his mortally frightened wife, telling her that she was to make sure she would not permanently harm the weakskin—and then, the squire was gone.

---

"Well, sister?" Sarevok, as tired as Imoen herself, said slowly after the siblings gave leave to their hungry familiars. "The analogy, by the way, is not apposite. Kriemhild killed her children before feeding them to her husband. Not her father."

"You are her first husband," Imoen reminded him coolly. "I'm only curious if you assigned me the part of Gunnar, brother. The poor, cuckolded Gunnar; the husband to Sigurd's true beloved— Was I supposed to marry Anomen? And you would only drop in ever so often, brother?"

"What?!" she yelled, angrily, in the silence which greeted her words, "You've already given him your own Andvari's ring— You were supposed to leave him in peace," she added, shaking her head. "Not have him feel that—whatever that is. Some sick hero worship. Not that. You were not supposed to make him understand an orc patricide, brother. You were not supposed to make him sympathise with you just because you happened to be right in a particular case. And you were certainly not supposed to make him look at you like that."

Just don't deny it, she thought. Don't deny it. It's not like he's even hiding it, not like you're hiding yours, those stolen, furtive, proud—fond—looks, looks which do not exist for him— Just don't deny it, brother. Please.

There was a massive scowl, and a flat-out denial; not of the sort she had expected, but an even more infuriating, "I did not."

"Then what happened?" she attacked, enraged. "I'm not a paladin. I have the right not to be your enemy, if I decide not to. He doesn't. He's a squire—not your squire, even if you keep repeating that, and he starts believing that, because a lie repeated enough becomes the truth— He's a future paladin. He's not supposed to feel anything like this—this conflict of interests. He's Helm's, brother, not yours! He's supposed to try to arrest you tomorrow, after we kill Firkraag—if we kill Firkraag—"

"We will, sister."

Imoen smiled, desperately, disarmed. "Yes. But, brother, you promised. You promised to Helm that you would protect him. You promised to me that you would not give him your sword, although you gave him his field marshal's armour. And you almost managed to stay businesslike and professional, and not friendly, and demanding only obedience and respect and fighting, and you lied to him that you don't want him to worship you, and he's still—he's still grown attached to you. You've gone and proven that you're half a human, with about the worst timing possible. And then, to make things worse, that your wife is. How come he's to be a Helmite if he's sympathising with murderers? You're such a failure, brother," she laughed, in a wretched, compassionate mockery of a mocking laugh.

Her brother sighed, and, rather changing the topic, asked, "Has it ever occurred to you, sister, that Helm is not a benevolent god? He is a judge; he tries his followers, to judge if they answer to his requirements. Delryn might have told you about his Trials. Do you not think that, being left alone with us; or, better said, with me—" A scowl. "—that it might be a good crucible for his resolve? That this was the purpose why he was made to obey me? To see if he managed to stay true to his creed?"

"I was thinking something like this, when he pledged himself to me," Imoen said, suddenly intrigued. "That he'd be avenging his master, slaying dragons and rescuing maidens while he's with us. All those things which are… traditional, I guess, for becoming a knight. But, well, they are not important, really. A knight really is not a knight without—" She shrugged, searching for a word. "Integrity? Some basic decency?" She could not help the barb. "The things you're not interested in, brother?"

"Honour?" Sarevok, studying the ground, offered flatly from his side of the fire. "However, yes, this is what I mean, sister. Delryn might have begun to find the alternative, as such, intriguing. And the icon of the alternative is, in this case, me." He did not appear to be especially proud of himself as he added, suddenly, "I wasn't planning to foster an unwanted marriage, by the way."

"I know," Imoen replied. "I didn't mean to say that, I think. Or the rest. It was vicious. I'm sorry."

"I hoped, perhaps, at most, that you might convince yourself to him, eventually," her brother continued calmly, now looking slightly higher, at the fire. "He would give you the security of nobility: a name, a title, a steady income, a privilege, and an order of paladins to protect you against our siblings. None of these are assets to be easily rejected."

"You would take them."

"And he is, as I believe we have agreed, an honourable man."

At the sound of the unsubtle inducement—for, apparently, though his cards lay open, and he had superficially denied his intent, her brother had not, in fact, given up his game—Imoen burst out with, this time genuine, laughter. "And a handsome, loyal Helmite who will soon be in possession of a barony and the majority of a dragon's hoard. In other words, he might be just up to my standards, you mean? Even if my standards so far include a dissolute elf, a Thayvian who turned out to be my brother, and a one-night werewolf? And, of the three, the werewolf was the best? You know, brother, perhaps I should stop limiting myself to half of mankind, too—"

"But, what I mean is," she said, seeing her exposed brother's indignant face, "while it's all true what you said—and though I know I could even love Anomen, eventually, friendly-like—I wouldn't want to spend whatever remains of my life among people who would look at me like Itona does, brother. Because they would know that I was a nameless bastard who, like a true bastard, insinuated herself into a decent family. And not just your average bastard, but a god's unholy bastard, at that." Pensively, she added, "The last is Anomen's expression, by the way. He called you it this morning, when you left us alone."

"He did," Sarevok said, wondrously amused. "Perhaps there is still some hope for him."

Imoen shot him a pointed look across the fire. "That was before you fetched him clean armour from an orc encampment, and then almost died in his lap." She snorted. "Even though you didn't want it, right now, he would be marrying me because he would want to marry—" She interrupted; too late. "Is there some particular reason why you're not killing me right now, brother?" she asked casually.

"I believe I gave you a word, sister," the man replied, with lethal composure.

"Ah. Then, your particular feelings on a certain matter—"

"—will, hopefully, remain my own," Sarevok finished smoothly; then, he smiled, privately, and said, "His tail is like the crescent moon at sunrise."

"What?!"

Her brother looked at her, amused. "Altair is a bit of a poet. She says that all birds are; she once knew a sparrow—or ate a sparrow… Either way, sister, she said that about your cat."

Imoen leaned out over the fire, and saw that Pangur and Altair had returned, and were currently feasting on a fairly large tenderloin. Pangur must have heard what Sarevok said, because he was looking intently at the limb in question.

Then, he looked at Imoen. **The chick said that 'bout me?**

The tail lashed. **Tell'er…**

Another lash. **Tell'er…**

An extremely self-satisfied lash. **Tell'er she's **_**hot**_

Imoen wondered, briefly, if she was still going to have a cat within a few moments; but her cat was looking at her meaningfully. "Altair, Pangur says that you are one hot chick."

The eagle looked at the cat, carefully; and then, tore off a large piece of meat and, with a glimmer in her golden eyes, put it in front of him.

---

Sarevok almost touched her when they were leaving the elders' circle to see which way his latest experiment in educating a future paladin had gone. It was an odd move, as if he wanted to put his arm around her waist and hold her close to himself, for a moment, now that they were still alone; and, in view of all the evidence gathered since she had first taken notice of it, she was forced to amend her views: it was Sarevok who would not handle her, now, as if, in some extremely abstract way, he was afraid to break her. She had no such compunctions. She wondered if her brother even realised his.

"How long are you going to continue this farce?" she asked him, quietly, after it turned out that the experiment, predictably, had not gone especially well; but that, surprisingly enough, nor had it been a spectacular failure. Both the wife and the squire still lived; they were actually sparring; Anomen was ducking a vicious, utterly uncouth and unschooled, cut at neck level, as the siblings entered the side cave.

"What do you mean, sister?" Sarevok asked, before yelling something long and, by the sound of it, utterly obscene, at his bashful wife; who promptly cowered. Forthwith, the dragon-helm was corrected on the almost-human head, the dragon-shield was put to actual use, and the dragon-slaying sword hit the Delryn legacy shield again, to the accompaniment of a fairly barbaric cry.

"Her. Gudrun."

"Kriemhild, sister," the man corrected calmly.

"Kriemhild, then," Imoen replied; the half-orc may, indeed, profit from a new name now that she was among humans. "Everything Anomen said about her is true, you know: she is filthy, ugly, uncouth and utterly homicidal. She is no Drizzt."

"Good," Sarevok decided, before yelling, "Delryn—" A long list of commands followed; when it was finished, and executed, he added, "Kill her, if you wish, sister. Preferably, though, postpone this until after we fight the dragon."

"Stop this noble posturing as emancipator of oppressed half-orc females, brother," Imoen retorted. "It does not become you. And you should know that it's one thing to tolerate a monster, but it's another to welcome it into your household. Why does orcish sound like you're cursing all the time?"

"Conceivably, because I am. The female tongue is much politer, of course— Actually, I thought about sending her off to Cernd. Either that, or I can take her with me to Aran; he will find use for another bodyguard."

"I think, brother," Imoen said thoughtfully, "that if there is anyone who can accept her, it's Cernd. And Cernd's people, half the time, aren't human themselves."

"They are a tribe," Sarevok agreed civilly. "She will find the loose chieftain structure familiar. The matter is settled, then. I will leave her in Trademeet, with the envoys."

For a moment, they watched the fight; Anomen, though still happy and bright-eyed, was looking extremely tired. She wondered if he had ever fought this much during a single day— Perhaps during his missions with the Order; suddenly, she wished she had heard more about them. Possibly tomorrow, after Sarevok would be gone, she would ask the squire about them.

"And he?" she asked in the end. "Anomen?" And then, because the thought still nagged her, she added, "By the way. Was Firkraag's message for real?"

Sarevok looked at her oddly. "It was. And Delryn—" He shrugged. "I will hurt him tomorrow, when he tries to arrest me. I— He will have everything he has always wanted, sister, and this will have to suffice him. He will not have caught an outlaw to boot; and, when he answers to his superiors why, he will be telling the truth— It will not be long, now," he said, hard-faced.

Imoen smiled, and probed, lightly, further, "Have you considered, brother, that Helm extracted a promise from both of you? That—"

"That he might have predicted that I would resent being used as anyone's crucible, and decide to fulfil my part of the pledge, and not… go out of my way to put hurdles in Delryn's path to fulfilling his?" A small, bitter laugh. "It appears that, if so, his plans failed— Even so, it's only until tomorrow," her brother said. "Tomorrow, he will have everything," he repeated, watching the squire without much obvious feeling. "And I will be with Aran."

And then, suddenly, and completely incongruously; for, as it turned out in the end, the matter under discussion was irrelevant in this regard—Imoen remembered what Edwin Odesseiron had once said during a breakfast in Mae'Var's guild; and understood the reason of a very private scowl a night before.

"Sarevok," she asked incredulously, "Aran Linvail had a geas cast on you, hadn't he?"


	28. IV: Knights' Attack, 9

_Note of introduction: _

_Here be dragons. This means clichés, I'm afraid, because there are only so many ways in which you can kill a big fire-breathing lizard. _

_Here be also paraphrases of quotes from and ideas blatantly stolen from and references to The Hobbit, Earthsea, and the V__ölsunga saga. Also, complete disregard of biology, physics and game mechanics. Still, hopefully ... Enjoy!_

**

* * *

****Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**9**

When Imoen, bleary-eyed and tired, entered the cave from which drafted the smell of meat, fat, garlic, onion, spices and chocolate—chocolate?—she saw a precious picture of familial bliss. Her brother and Anomen crouched over a big cauldron, talking quietly while Sarevok was stirring something bubbling and simmering which exuded the mouth-watering bouquet; shirtless over the steam, each with a necklace, each with, by now, a fairly unkempt beard, they looked uncannily like two old hags in a tale; or, perhaps, two young orc shamans. The familiars were missing; but in the corner of the cave there sat Kriemhild, mending her husband's clothes while stealing an occasional frightened glimpse at him. If Sarevok had no use for her cooking skills, Imoen deduced from that gaze, he had one less use for her.

She wanted to go, and shake the half-orc, and tell her that they were going dragon-hunting together soon, and that not many people ever survived that, and that everyone was scared, and that if Kriemhild insisted on searching for something to prove her worth— She sighed, instead. Not everything at once. It would take a lot of time to reclaim Kriemhild for humanity; and someone far gentler and more patient than her brother or her. And, at the end of it, the woman would never be completely normal.

In the meantime, she had to stop her brother before he murdered them all with his cooking.

One day, he would find something which, however he applied himself to it, he would not be able to learn. She wondered what would happen then; an irresistible force meeting an unmovable object— He would break, possibly; though now, she hoped that he would not. Herself, she'd much rather that, instead of being decent at a great many things, he was just generally decent; but that was a long-term project, too, if possible at all.

Kriemhild noticed her, and gave out a small, stifled cry; both men looked up from the cauldron, and at her. She saw how their faces changed, and decided that she hadn't managed to wipe out all the blood, after all.

"My lady Imoen?" Anomen asked, sounding extremely alarmed, and entirely unmindful of his shirtlessness. "What happened?"

Imoen looked at her brother, who already knew, or, at least, suspected, and answered, succinctly, "A bad dream, Anomen."

---

The lone woman was walking through a waste land of wasted blood, set under a sky of ichor green; wherever she went, chaos, death and destruction followed.

The topography of the dream-land was fluid and unstable, and changed with Imoen's mood; but, by now, she knew that, since this place was her, and she was this place, she ruled here, and could find her way here at will and at whim.

She found the wasteland plateau over the plain of statues of who, and what, were, or were to be, her trophies. She studied the dragon. Was this Firkraag? Was she the one who would deal him the killing blow? Were there other dragons here, in this gallery?

The questions were vain; and it was not here that she meant to go that night. She shuddered in the cold wind, adjusted the cloak which appeared on her shoulders at that moment, and sought.

Mae'Var's guild was surrounded by a ring of fire; an enormous, red fiery shield set over a sizzling river of lava flow, an arsonist's and a pyromaniac's murder weapon and mad delight. Of course, it fit. Edwin used to like his fireballs, and fire arrows, and minute meteors…

Imoen smiled, and stepped into the fire, walking lightly, like a cat, on top of the river's surface. The heat enveloped her and greeted her as her own; and who knew? Perhaps, once she woke up, she would remember how to draw on the coldness within to protect herself from fire?

She stepped out of the fire, unscathed; she opened the door to the guild, and ran up the stairs to the topmost floor. Once there, she halted for a moment, leaning against the wall. The wizard was turned away from her, fiddling with something on the potions' worktable, mumbling lightly.

At last, she coughed lightly to get his attention, and said, "Hello, Edwin."

The wizard started; then, he turned towards her, irately, and announced, "I am not talking to you. You killed me. How dare you kill me, and then come to visit me, as if nothing happened? (And she waited so long, too.)"

Imoen smiled: Edwin looked just as he had looked in life, and muttered just like he had muttered in life, and was speaking in as nasal a whine as he had been speaking in life, and entirely managed to gloss over the small fact that he had been trying to kill her when she had killed him. In other words, death had not changed him much.

"I thought that you might be busy," she replied diplomatically. "What with Father did to this place… But I see that you managed to tidy up."

The stacks of papers were as neatly put as they could. Even the skull was in its usual place, and grinning at her. In this realm, the expression was even more sinister than it had been in Amn. It reminded her of the sigil of Bhaal Irenicus had carved into her skin.

"Why yes, I did," Edwin replied, haughtily, "With no thanks to you. (Isn't this what an apprentice is FOR? I should fire her… or fireball her… now THAT is an idea…)"

"Edwin, I need your help," Imoen cut through the stream of muttering. "I really do. You were right that Aran Linvail cast a geas on our brother…"

"Of course I was right. (Edwin Odesseiron is ALWAYS right, foolish girl.)"

"Well, yes," Imoen replied with perfect aplomb. "I must know how to take it off. And you're the best wizard I know," she added, figuring that, given the whole life-and-death situation, a little bit of flattery wouldn't hurt. "Can you help me?"

Edwin shook his head. "No. (Yes.)"

Imoen grinned; apparently, Edwin's lifetime habit of doublespeak was the perfect antidote to Father's iron rule in this place. "All right. You can't. How do I do it?"

Edwin approached one of the bookshelves, and started to pull out a book out of the thin air and the empty space within; halfway through, his hand started to shake; he started to push the book back and let it disappear.

Imoen dashed to the bookshelf, and put her hand on Edwin's, stopping it. "Edwin," she said softly into the Red Wizard's ear. "I am not an apprentice anymore. And I know where this place is, and what this place is. It's Father's realm. We are in the Throne of Blood, in the Planes now, the place where ideas and concepts take shape and form… And this is our place, our home, the home of murderers. And I killed you. This, here, gives me power over you… The power to question you, and perhaps the power to do something else, too… And you are my memory as much as you are Father's puppet here. He does not rule here alone; you exist as long as he needs you and as long as _I_ need you— So, please, as your sister, who remembers you, and who killed you, I ask you. Try to fight him. I need your help. I need to know."

Her hand was shaken off, abruptly, and she was flung across the room and into the opposite wall; she hit it with a crash and a massive pain all throughout her body.

"Fight me, daughter, will you?" her own voice taunted as she found herself viciously kicked, lifted, backhanded, then dropped, and kicked and kicked and—

"This is the third time you have defied me," she heard as, for a moment, there was no new pain, and, coughing blood and rolled into a ball on the floor, she looked up, into her own, triumphant, twisted, unscarred face. "And now you have dared to do it here. In my home. In my realm. In my throne. I showed you. I let that dwarf failure show you. I let you taste of my power. Did you really think that your powers come to you as you command them, daughter? That you managed to wrestle even a fraction of my might from me?"

"Everything," her voice derided. "Every prize, every treasure would be your reward. If you only obeyed. If you only listened. And this is how you repay me? By trying to incite an insurrection? For the sake of another failure? There are others, who will listen to me. We shall see how long you will last against them, shattered, exhausted and powerless. You will return here, on your knees and begging to be taken back, daughter."

Imoen, in passing deciding that what she was about to do was utter stupidity, went for it, and coughed out, "—no."

"No?" The other Imoen, who was Bhaal, suddenly grew cool and cold. "You are on your knees—"

There was a loud thud as a skull connected with another skull, and the avatar of her Father, blinking in incomprehension, doubled and slid, slowly, to the floor.

Imoen looked at the short, bearded figure standing on a desk with a cat on her shoulder and a grinning skull in her hands, and managed to mumble out, "Irene? Pangur?"

"We've been looking for you _everywhere_," Irene said. "Listen, Father will wake up soon, so… I can't help you, and Edwin is now really dead, but— Remember, in Baldur's Gate? Seek a seeker. A soothsayer. A diviner. And now, _go_."

---

"_Nam hietha arw Firkraag arkvaissa!"_

Lord Jierdan Firkraag, Fifth Baron Windspear, dragon, in his human shape was tall and stately, with a shoulder-length mane of dark-brown hair, and a long scarlet cloak which flowed after him, royally, in a great many folds.

He was standing, alone, turned away from the party who filed into the giant cavern through the passage the orcs used to reach their master. He was standing on the border of light and darkness: the light flowing from the outside, and the darkness of the gold-filled cave itself; he was watching the horizon with his heavily-gloved hands joined behind himself, and his voice was cultured, ardent and sweet, and poured into one's ears and maimed one's mind like spiced, hot chocolate. Imoen was, privately, grateful for the horrible orcish potions of clarity they had all drunk before entering his lair.

She scanned the battleground. There were piles of gold and jewels—dubious cover and unsound surface on which to fight; one escape route—the one by which they had come; one place definitely to avoid—the open ledge; a fall from this height would be certain death.

"Not to put it too bluntly, but we want a confession of your guilt," she said; Anomen had pled for Helm to lend them courage before they had entered the lair, and she was grateful for it now. That man, out there, was making her uneasy as it was.

"Preferably a written one, although a verbal one will do," she added. "We can't leave without it, as you probably know."

The man laughed. "Know? Do I know that? Do I?"

He turned around; and, for a moment, there was a glimpse of handsome dark eyes in a handsome dark face, a rapier by the side and a heavy, gold, ruby-set chain on the neck. Then, there was a dragon.

Massive, slender and lacertilian, he did not fill the lair, but his presence did: the air around him shimmered with the heat of his body's furnace, and stank of sulphur and smoke. His was a deep, dull red, and his wings were purple and ashen grey; there were horns on his head, frills on his neck and a large, badly healed scar on his breast's left side. Someone must have tried to kill him already, and almost succeeded.

"Perhaps I do," he replied to his own question, in a dragon's booming voice. "Yes. I do. Yes. I did it," he added, bored, lifting his right claw, and then, for a moment, spreading his wings and blocking the light completely. "I was bored. I was curious. I wanted to know in whom Jon Irenicus had been so interested. I wanted to take revenge on my old Harper enemy, and, since the enemy is dead, I wanted to ruin his child. I arranged for Conster to fetch the paladins." By Imoen's side, Anomen, intently listening, clenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes under his helmet; and grasped his newly re-enchanted mace tighter.

"I let Lassal take Conster in return for relieving me of an end which had been too loose for too long. I demanded that you bring me the arms of Strohm… And you, manlings," he added, looking at Kriemhild, now gazing unafraid into the adder's eyes, "complied."

Sarevok laughed lightly. "I like you, dragon," he said. "Must we fight?"

The dragon took one brief, saurian look at him, and attacked.

---

(Never laugh at living dragons, Imoen thought in passing, darkly.)

---

Destroy his resistance to magic; breach his magic protections; hit him with cold; hit him with lightning; hit him with acid and magic missiles; if you shoot, shoot at his eyes. Haste us. Slow him. And run. Move. Hide. Make him bleed, but stay as far away from him as you can for your spells to still take hold.

Firkraag took one large swipe with his claw, and the entire mantra, simple as it was, repeated as many times as it had been, was almost forgotten. Almost.

Careful planning always defeats rushed actions in the end, the Helmite creed states; and so, the party had researched and planned. He should not breathe fire, they had decided: there are too many treasures in his lair.

He did not. He moved his wings, once, lightly, and sent all of the party flying into the wall behind in a cloud of gold debris— So much like Father, Imoen had the time to think.

Kriemhild's furious charge awoke her; the long, black hair flew and the hard, black eyes glittered as, barely covering herself behind her shield, yelling, the half-orc attacked. She was swift; the drake was swifter still. He snatched her mid-air; he flung her at a wall, far away.

Anomen would pray for his doom, and then fight him; Sarevok would spell a malicious enchantment on him, try to enfeeble him and his mind alike, and then fight him, too. Whether they would succeed was theirs; Imoen downed a potion of healing, and set to do her part.

---

The first spells held.

Running; trying to escape the claw and the bite and the tail and the wing; casting unfamiliar spells in a rushed, hasty, imprecise way—two days ago, she had known none of them; no abjurations; but she was not an apprentice anymore— The spells held. If the dragon were immune to magic (as the tale of the Dame Nadeen Anthara proved), she had lowered this resistance, if not entirely destroyed it; what magic protections there had been (and some dragons were wont to cast them; for reference, heed Sir Janur Lanthwar's story), she had breached at least part of them— And she still lived. So did everyone else.

Kriemhild, bleeding and glorious, was attacking again, madly, trying to get through the ancient scar, where the scales had not grown as they should, straight to the beast's heart; Imoen jerked her hands in a short, curt up-to-down move, finished, icily, "_—lod"_,and great hail stones started to pound on the beast's head, body and wings; and then, she disappeared, for the wyrm took interest in her.

Firkraag roared, as if he were now an animal, and not a thinking creature, even though two of three Sarevok's enchantments had failed: Anomen had made bleed the second of his hind legs. The squire, this time, managed to back off in time before the jaws snapped on him; Imoen had managed to haste the party.

Over the mounds of piled wealth, she ran; why hadn't Sarevok even pulled out his sword yet? The dragon, under the ice, leapt forward, gracefully, sinking, lowering himself, trying to crush the half-orc under his weight, to grind her into a lifeless sack of blood and flesh and bones— She disappeared beneath him; Imoen shot a volley of magic missiles at the dragon's eyes.

He rose from the bed of gold, and, smouldering in the dying hailstorm, looked straight at her. "You shall perish, manling," he promised, charmingly; and she almost let herself be charmed. But her brother was standing on the dragon's back, right where the neck joined the torso and the frills ended.

Firkraag hadn't noticed the intruder yet; he hadn't noticed the Peridan, Kriemhild's dragon-slaying blade, broken at the hilt and buried in his breast, between the wayward scales; he hadn't noticed Anomen, limping on his right leg and unable to hold a shield, praying equably for his doom again; his eyes of molten gold were only for Imoen. "My revenge," he hissed out, "on Gorion's child."

Then, as Sarevok started to pry the scales on the drake's sinuous neck, Firkraag started; the pain must be felt at last. He gazed back; roared; snapped his jaw; moved his wings; shook himself; none of this helped remove the pest from his back; and then, the dragon took wing.

"Anomen!" Imoen, remembering herself, herself snapped as they both looked after the serpentine silhouette disappearing together with its rider outside the cave. "Heal yourself. I'll see if Kriemhild's still alive."

---

The half-orc was, though barely; her crude, thick-boned and indelicate parentage was the only thing which saved her. Imoen could not heal her herself, not anymore, not after the night's dream; and so, she put one of her last precious healing potions to the woman's lips. The squire limped to her assistance; she looked at him. His armour, shining that very morning, was now dented in the back and in the front. Firkraag had almost bit Anomen in half when he had lifted him and dropped him onto his cot of gold; suddenly, she realised that the limp must be the least of his problems.

"I told you to heal yourself, Anomen," she reminded him impatiently.

"Aye, my lady. A moment," he replied gladly, crouching by the half-orc and murmuring a prayer. When the white, unbearably fair light enveloped Kriemhild, he looked at Imoen again. "Will we see him again, my lady?"

She shrugged. "If he dies, you will never learn of it. There will be no body." She did not add, If he dies, I will meet him in my dreams, in my Father's house.

Then, she wondered. _If?_ Why _if_? _When_.

The half-orc, smeared red and gold by her blood and Firkraag's gold dust, stirred, sat, heavily; and, looking at the two human faces, asked something in her uncouth tongue. "Sarevok? I don't know," Imoen replied. "I just don't know. He went dragon-riding, you know, and that's not something you return from."

Kriemhild snarled and made a slight curvy move with her hand. "Firkraag? Oh. Firkraag. Well. He will be returning, yes. We are in his lair, after all. Will we still want to be here when he returns?"

She looked at Anomen, forcing herself to think and catalogue the magic and potions and all the other means at her disposal. One limping cleric without a shield; one barely moving barbarian warrior without a sword—oh: Kriemhild contemptuously threw away the broken Peridan's hilt and pulled out her father's filthy bone club from the scarlet royal sheath.

"We have what we came for," Imoen decided, noticing, in passing, that she herself was also bleeding from her knees and elbows. Firkraag had not caught her, himself; but she scraped herself when she fell into some or other nugget of gold or finely-cut jewel. "We're leaving."

It was definitely not the answer Anomen Delryn was expecting. Indignant, he demanded, "My lady?! I do protest! 'Tis not knightly to cede the field and abandon one's comrade in need!"

"You nearly died the last time you tried that," she reminded him before she thought; at the sight of his face, she sighed, and instantly felt sorry—an odd thought occurred to her, no doubt instigated by the night's dream: this one man here was an almost exact opposite of Edwin's; that one, she had had to push into danger. This one, she had to restrain.

She felt sorry; and, cruelly, added, "I am not my brother, Anomen. But he taught me your dogma yesternight. The whole creed, from 'Never betray your trust' to 'Demonstrate excellence and purity of loyalty—' Kriemhild!"

In the end, they followed the half-orc to the ledge outside.

---

A red dragon was soaring on the south-west wind; a sight such as few behold without punishment.

Firkraag's scales glittered crimson and scarlet as he danced among the clouds in the morning sun. He was wild, lithesome and magnificent; born to fly, and not to stay grounded; and breathtaking.

"I can't get him from here," Imoen said absently, unable to take her eyes off him. "He's too far. Anomen—"

"My lady?"

"You're a paladin. Smite him, or something."

"But— My lady— Your brother—"

"—is dead," she interjected as coldly and finally as finally did she realise the simple truth. Irene was dead; and Edwin was dead; and Gorion was dead; and Sarevok was dead. And, unfortunately for herself, she would mourn her brother after she avenged him: the tears would be there to be found.

To her left, Kriemhild brandished her club and her shield, watching the horizon intently, squinting in the bright daylight to which she was not accustomed; she curled her lips unconsciously, presenting fully both her upper canines and her boar-like tusks— She was as tense and expectant as Pangur when he followed Altair on one of her scouting missions.

Behind the orc, the squire sighed, deeply. Yesterday, when he had prayed for a life, the words of the chant had been unknown even to him; in the chaos of all that had happened, he had not realised it himself until much later, when he had set to the evening offices as he had cleaned his armour. Now, another unfamiliar prayer pressed itself on his lips— "Aye, my lady," he muttered unhappily. "I hear and I obey."

The plea was pronounced half-heartedly at best, stuttered and stammered rather than voiced and spoken proudly as it should; but, in the end, he was holding in his free, freshly healed, weaker, right arm a javelin of pure divine brilliance; a bolt of godly glory.

He hurled it forth, without specially bothering to take aim first; it would strike true if he only willed it.

The lance did; bright and sharp, it crossed the expanse of air between the party and the dancing drake, and, for a moment, before it disappeared, it pierced Firkraag's breast and pinned him to the golden, light-filled cloud behind. Kriemhild laughed and jovially hit the squire's back; Anomen, unhappily, hissed; the flesh under the armour, though healed, was still tender.

Firkraag was scattering a rain of scarlet blood, now; but he took notice of the party, and Imoen remembered that they were no longer in the dragon's lair. Anomen and Kriemhild must have understood that, too, for he was pleading, now hastily and with full conviction, for Helm to shield Imoen against fire again, and she was putting up her dragon-shield to try and provide some protection for the party.

He's too close, and too fast, the Bhaalspawn smiled as the air roared with the sound of a dragon diving at full speed; and then, drawing on her inner coldness, she shot. For whoever almost killed him before, she thought as she doubled in the new, sudden pain of her Father's castigation; and then, because she wanted it to be so, she added, Gorion, perhaps.

The arrow struck and vanished in the flesh, piercing the eye and the eye socket to stop in the brain, where it shortly started to spread its poison; as it did, five feet of steel slid between upset scales and penetrated the nape of the drake's neck, rending the spinal cord and rendering Firkraag's limbs, lungs and wings, useless.

And therewithal, Imoen thought, So, it _is_ possible to backstab a dragon.

And fainted.

---

"—suffered a shock. The Lady Anchev departed to deal with the animals and find her kindred's remedies to restock our supplies—"

"And what happened to my brother, Anomen?" Imoen, awoken at that moment, interrupted. "Tell me all. I want to know it all."

The paladin _in spe_ took one look at his second patient's face and recited, briskly, "Your brother, my lady, suffered multiple fractures of ribs, arms and legs, several of them compound, multiple abrasions, internal and external haemorrhage, a cracked spleen and a concussion. 'Twas, I daresay, but my Lord Helm's blessing that he survived."

"I don't doubt it, Anomen," Imoen said, looking at her brother's ashen face; even Sarevok's eyes almost lost their glimmer. "That, and a very good healer."

"I thank you, my lady, for your kindness. And now, I think— I think I shall now leave you two alone, my lady," the squire replied, perhaps finally noticing the uncanny, though entirely human, gleam in Imoen's own eyes. As he was standing up, though, he must come across a novel idea; he perked up, and, turning to her brother, offered, "Mayhap I shall go and start skinning the wyrm? A hide this size shall make for a very fine suit of armour, I say! And I can—"

There was a brief, odd laugh, and a voice, hoarse and unlike itself, said, "No need to hurry, Delryn. Take rest. Have a look around the dragon's lair, if you will, instead. My wife will fetch my sword."

At that, Anomen smiled, self-consciously, and departed; Imoen rolled onto her stomach, and took a careful peek over the edge of the outcropping. A vertiginous distance below, there was a red, coiled, worm-like body lying amidst a spatter and a large puddle of blood; Firkraag in his death.

She rolled back to face Sarevok. Her brother was half-lying, half-leaning on his left forearm in the usual pose of a convalescent who would much rather rise and go and move and do something. "Have you acquired a taste for near-death experiences, brother?" she asked him coldly. "You must not pointlessly kill, so you decided to pointlessly die, instead? Men and alcohol and women… And now, this. Dragon-riding. What next? What of your grand ambitions?! You can't become a god if you're dead, brother."

Though pallid, as usual, he rose to the challenge. "Then you should be glad, should you not, little sister?" he drawled lazily. "One less contender to the throne. One less moral quandary for you. One less enemy. And you would not even have to kill me, because I would be—" He did not finish, because Imoen, inexplicably to herself, burst into tears.

"—dead! Dead, dead, _dead_! Everyone dead—Irene dead, and Edwin dead, and now you, and—and just because you would be such a reckless idiot— I thought that you were dead— That the next time I would see you—" Her hands were trembling. Why was she trembling, again?

Next to her, her brother was looking quite alarmed. "Little sister—"

"Yes!" she yelled at him, madly. "Precisely! I'm the little sister! I'm too young for this stuff. I shouldn't have to be telling you off. I should be the one who gets to be reckless and irresponsible. Irene always was telling me off for it— Isn't that how it's done, between normal people? I think that it's supposed to be like this, that it's the big brother chastising the little sister for stupidity, not the other way round—" Her memory supplied only very vague images, but they all agreed on this one important point. She calmed down. She was right. Her brother must bow to the force of her argument.

He did not. He smirked, instead, and hoist himself to a sit, bringing himself instantly much closer to her; and then, asked, "But have you considered that you may be actually my big sister, little sister?"

Imoen shot him a venomous look of pure spite and lied, "No."

Sarevok made another of those self-conscious, arrested moves, and she decided to hug him to unsettle him further.

The embrace was awkward, because that there was a man who embraced his lovers, killed his sisters, was enemy to most of those he encountered, and currently tender after leaping off a careening dragon's back and badly, gracelessly, falling. It was at times too stiff, and at times too tight, and in dire need of repeated practice to become as much as a decent five-minutes'-worth hugging. "Don't ever joke again about dying, little brother," Imoen said, vowing to force Sarevok to practice this particular art; if he applied himself, she would say that he could, possibly, yet learn it, even at his current age; he was a fast learner, and the timid promise appeared to be there. "I don't want you to die any more than I want you to kill for me— If you really have to die, make sure to stay alive at least until I have some friends. I don't want to be alone, and, even though I like your gift, Pangur is not enough. Not really."

"What was it like?" she asked when her tears dried and they separated; then, seeing her brother's sudden discomfiture, clarified, laughing, "Dragon-riding, I mean?"

Sarevok, obviously still shell-shocked, took a fairly long moment to gather his wits; then, shrugged apologetically, and said, "Everything it should be, little sister—" He laughed, too, seeing her face, and, clearly straining to elaborate, added, "I would tell you, sister, that it was better than flying Altair in hunt; but you haven't flown her… He spoke to me."

Imoen frowned; the way Sarevok said it… "Firkraag?"

A curt nod. "He told me that rare is the human who dares mount a dragon; rarer still the ones who dare do so against the dragon's will; that to do so and stay on the dragon's back is unsung of. He then told me that would speak to me, as he would to a dragon, for I was proud, selfish, malicious, and cruel, and in all that, almost like a dragon. He told me to taste his blood, and when I did, we spoke his tongue—humans cannot lie in the dragon-speak, did you know that? And we spoke this, and the language of birds, and the tongues of elves…"

He paused for a moment, and picked up in a very different voice. "Presumably, since I was in his blind spot and holding tightly, he simply wanted to keep me occupied until my protections dispelled, and the heat of his body and the cold of air killed me. I kept recasting the spells; but I was almost out of components as it was when Anomen pierced him, little sister…"

"Although, perhaps," he added pensively, "he simply wanted company. He was dying already; Kriemhild's sword was making its way to his heart, and he knew that… Either way, he spoke to me. He told me that he knew that I had slain Gorion and taken his revenge from him; that it had been Gorion who had given him his wound; that Irenicus' name had been Joneleth and that he had been an elf; that he knew of one of his kin, and ours, called Abazigal. He told me to roast and eat his heart to learn his wisdom, if I wished, fill my bags with his gold, if I wished, and take his scales to arm myself, if I wished; yet he told me that he would rather that I minded Fafnir's last counsel to Sigurd…"


	29. IV: Knights' Attack, 10

**Siblings**

**Part IV: Knights' Attack**

**10**

_Sigurd answered and said, "Few may have victory by means of that same countenance of terror, for whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all."_

_Then says Fafnir, "Such counsel I give thee, that thou take thy horse and ride away at thy speediest, for ofttimes it fails out so, that he who gets a death-wound avenges himself none the less."_

—_Of the Slaying of the Worm Fafnir; translated by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson_

---

When the siblings were re-entering the dragon's lair, Kriemhild came out to meet them, and Anomen came out to meet them; and both were empty-handed.

"I took the liberty to pack some of the finer gems," the squire said, and earned himself two approving looks; Sarevok, amused, growled, "Excellent. Never be it said that I divorced my wife without providing for her."

"Divorced?" perplexed, Anomen asked a turned back, as the wife in question, stone-faced and terrified, exchanged with her husband words in orcish about their swords: her broken and his undelivered. "Yes," Imoen replied, instead. "The trouble may be in getting her to understand the concept. I don't think it exists among the orcs."

The squire's brow wrinkled with sudden thought, and, belatedly, she wondered if the custom existed among the nobles of Athkatla; a marriage of names, land and wealth might be difficult to untie— Sarevok laughed and draped a dragon's scarlet cloak on his ugly, unloved wife's stiff shoulders, before hitting them genially, comrade-like, as he would her father. The mantle fit the green of the half-orc's complexion, and reminded Imoen of druids' fiery swords in a bygone swamp.

Then, as Kriemhild went forth on some or other errand of her own, her husband turned to Anomen Delryn again. "Well, Delryn," he said, amused. "My wife satisfied herself with a cloak. The scales are still on the dragon. My sister—" He looked at Imoen; who shrugged, and said, "I have everything I need, brother. It's only the jewels for me."

Sarevok turned back to the man. "And you, squire? Have you found something to your taste here?"

As a jest, it was as weak as there might be; within a few days, the blood-smeared gold would be all Anomen's, even if he did not know it— As a turn of phrase, it was less happy yet; for, suddenly, the man was looking at Imoen's brother with eyes so unguarded that she must think sadly: If you two had only met when he had grown up a bit more, and you had grown down a lot more, brother; then, you two might now be friends, or even lovers; and I'd love him for a brother-in-law; if, once grown up, he would still want you—

Her brother laughed lightly; in the man's face, because he was unable to tear his eyes off it. "You don't, I see. Honour and glory it is, then, for you, squire."

Then, Imoen tugged him on the sleeve. "Sarevok—"

---

The sword was grand, sharp and beautiful; and buried so deep in the gold that, but for the sheer brilliance it was bathed in, they would not have noticed it at all.

The radiance was such that her brother must narrow his eyes and, with a firm, resolute snarl, must fight with all his strength not to look away from it as it still grew in strength as they uncovered the blade; he stayed his hand while they brushed the last pieces of treasure off it.

Now, the three of them were crouched around it, and eyeing it contemplatively.

"'Tis—" Anomen started, wide-eyed, and promptly grew silent.

"I wonder how it got in here," Imoen said, and thought, And he doesn't even see the most important part.

"Some fool of a paladin attempted to slay the dragon with it, and made a gift of it to him instead," Sarevok rejoined curtly, scratching his beard absently; then, he looked up, bright-eyed, at Anomen. "Well, Delryn? It's yours. Take it. I do hope that you will prove wiser than the previous owner," he added, amused; and Imoen thought that her brother must definitely be recovered already from his little dragon-riding incident.

"'Tis a knightly sword," Anomen put forward, reluctantly, reluctant to take his eyes off it.

"I'm sure that you will soon find someone to give it to you properly," Imoen assured him. "When you're made a knight."

"Dubbed a knight," her brother corrected lazily, looking away from the radiance. "Though, if you want an accolade, squire, my sister can give you one. Beware, though: I'm still tender after the one she conferred on me."

"Brother," Imoen warned him, watching the procession of feelings on Anomen's face. He wanted the blade; he did not want to covet it; 'twas a knightly blade, and he should accept it from his master's hands; but his master was dead; and—

The one admonished sighed imperceptibly, slid across a floor of gold, circled a squire with his arm, struck him lightly on a shoulder, and growled softly into his ear, "Be thou a knight— If thou willst, squire," he added when, at last, an intimately familiar, utterly irate and righteously indignant redness of cheeks superseded the squire's surprise at the sacrilege. "My sister has the right of it, Delryn; if you will not claim it, wrap it, and present it to your superiors; and they will return it to you, on the midday after your night of solitary vigil, when you are dubbed a knight in the main hall of the Radiant Heart, on the eyes of all— Or they won't." And if they don't, Imoen added to herself, I'll join the crusade Sarevok will wage against the Most Noble Order to put right this wrong.

"But this," Sarevok growled lightly over the squire's shoulder, very much like a demon set on seducing a pure soul, "this here is a tool of war. It does not want to lie in vain; it has lain here, useless, for too long already. It wishes to be used. It wants to punish. It wants to castigate. I feel its thirst; it wants to destroy me—"

The squire frowned. "But I don't want to fight you," he said honestly, turning his head to face the other man.

Sarevok, merrily, replied across the shared breathing space, "Then pray to your god that we do not meet again, Delryn. When you are a paladin, and we meet, we _shall_ fight. And you had better be well armed then," he added, with a smirk, a spark, and a slight, inviting nod in the sword's direction. "It is a paladin's weapon; it will serve you well, if you keep it. Take it; for yourself, or, if you insist, for another. But take it."

Then, he let the squire go, as if that one burnt him like the holy weapon's touch, and returned to his previous spot, watching the man with an utterly amused glimmer in his eyes; Anomen lowered his head, sighed deeply, and said, "There is something I must tell you, Anchev—"

"But I don't want to hear it," Sarevok interrupted him calmly; and then, pressed, urgently, "The sword. Take it or leave it. It is your choice; make it."

"Fine!" Anomen Delryn shot at him angrily. "I shall take it. And I shall deliver it to the Prelate Wessalen and Sir Ryan Trawl, to make of it what they want."

"Fine," he heard in response; as dry and unfeeling as, perhaps, it should be.

---

They all left Firkraag's lair in a mood much fouler than the one in which they had first entered it. Before long, Sarevok was barely civil; perhaps the presence of the holy weapon around him cast a shade on his thoughts; or, perhaps, it merely illuminated their inherent darkness. Either way, soon, with every passing moment, he resembled to Imoen less a happy, bright and brilliant creature, and more a heavy, dark storm cloud, about to burst forth with pent-up murderous tension and pressure. Anomen was burdened by his mace and his shield and a weapon whose true weight, among the party, only he would ever bear or know; and he was growing increasingly confused and irritated by the Son of Murder's sudden evil humour, and the way all his attempts to communicate were soundly, monosyllabically rejected.

And Imoen, though she knew that half a year since, they would all be very different people, and no one would think of this short outing at all, and least of all the knight, who, by that time, would have everything he had ever dreamt of—was still, slightly, sad. One wished to make a human out of a machine and a beast and a god and a brother, and one ended up being a cruel bastard oneself; just as whatever human there was found in the meantime must, in the end, be a cruel bastard, again.

Paladins had this way of inspiring the best in people. It was, perhaps, as important a function they fulfilled as the tangible one, fighting; they were supposed to inspire with their example, remind people of some basic goodness and innocence most people believed they simply could not afford; or, sometimes, they believed they had never possessed. The trouble was that paladins were people, too, and that, sometimes, under too much pressure, they forgot themselves; and that Sarevok's best was still rather terrifying—

It will not be long now, she thought. And, half a year since—or a week since—we will all be very different people. Happy people, perhaps.

---

The familiars were missing still; but Kriemhild joined the party in the orcs' caves, carrying a small bundle of her possessions; shortly, and without one jest, one tease or one superfluous word, they led the horses outside; and Imoen saw Firkraag up close again.

He was still massive, still worm-like and still beautiful; he lay at the feet of the ledge, taking up nearly the entire end of the gorge, because his wings were unfolded; the party barely found a path around him, and the horses did not like his sulphurous and smoky smell.

Once they circled him, they halted; the horses would graze as the party skinned the dragon. Sarevok, promptly, without looking at anyone, started to climb the beast: the leg and the elbow and the wing and the back.

Imoen frowned: Anomen followed her brother, dashing almost, leaving her and Kriemhild and the holy sword and his own weapons behind.

"Anchev—" he pled, breathless, once he was on the wing, and Sarevok on top of the carcass, and as, without paying the squire the slightest heed, he knelt and furiously started to pull out his own unholy blade from the dragon's neck.

There was no response; and so, the squire tried again. "Anchev—"

"What?!" Sarevok roared at him, suddenly afoot, facing the man, with brightly burning eyes and a greensteel knife in hand. Anomen, unfazed by the display, and unmindful of what had happened the last time the taller man had been his other self, repeated, with a step towards him, "Anchev—"

Then, a brief whizzing sound was heard, and Sarevok roared again, "What?!" The pain was still there in his voice; but now, mixed with disbelief as he was eyeing the crossbow bolt which had pierced his, now knifeless and insensitive, hand. "Who?!" he snarled, casting a blazing look in the direction from which the shot had come: the turning in the gorge. "What son of orc dares?!"

"I have been called many things in my life," a cultured voice with the quintessential Athkatlan noble's accent replied, "but an orc, never. Sarevok Anchev, I presume? Allow me to introduce myself: Ryan Trawl, of Athkatla's Radiant Heart."

There was a brief pause, just enough for the audience to fill in all the absent titles.

"Consider yourself under arrest."

---

It was, Imoen decided, a testament either to the force with which Anomen Delryn had smitten her brother, or, perhaps, to a bud of decency growing in a very arid ground, that, given such a noble, lengthy introduction, Sarevok did not use it to haste himself silently, move the few steps to Anomen, and treat him as a human shield.

Or, possibly, it was the result of a cool calculation of his chances against the some fifteen to twenty true paladin knights, on horseback and foot, who now turned the bend in the gorge; which was a dead end for one without wings.

The paladin Sir Ryan Trawl himself was riding a dark horse; he had a simple helmet on his head, a simple plate on his breast, and an empty crossbow in his hand. He made a curt move with it, and commanded, "Don't move, Anchev, and don't try any tricks. Delryn, get down."

A rather delicate moment ensued as Anomen cast a desperate, partly pleading, partly apologetic, look, towards certain quarters; then, as he received absolutely no response; and then, as he started to descend the dragon, slowly, reluctantly, much unlike the way he had just run up the carcass in full armour; yet Imoen almost sighed aloud in relief as she saw him then, as he truly was. In the end, Sarevok's presence in Anomen's life had not tarnished the armour of the squire's Helmite faith; at most, it had lent it some golden brilliance.

Her brother, too, was relieved; for now, his squire was secure and he had an enemy and he could shed all his private, confused thoughts, because Ryan Trawl, in Sarevok's own unwillingly admitted words, was not an utter fool; which meant that he was such an enemy that he must concentrate all his wits to be able to destroy him, and think, not feel.

The paladin was now saying, as Anomen approached him, "Perfect. It is almost exactly like the elf said. I'm surprised. He did not appear to be a particularly trustworthy sort, and these tales of dragons in the heart of Amn…" His eyes flickered briefly to Firkraag, before he continued, in the same succinct tone, "I believed him only because he knew your name and call, Delryn. Well done."

**Whassgoin' on?**

Imoen scanned her surroundings until she located the source of the voice: a pink nose was peeking cautiously from under a giant, reptilian wing.

Where have you two been gone? she demanded. Fine guardians you are.

**T'say g'bye.** **Wha' wi' the chick—**

And the last time? she pressed on, annoyed less at the cat than at herself for her complete lack of common sense. How could Sarevok and she have been so stupid as to leave Coran and Anomen alone together even for a moment? Not that anyone would have suspected that, what with Coran being Coran and Anomen, Anomen—

It was a joke of cosmic proportions, really; she wondered who the woman was. But it explained both Firkraag's warning and Anomen's misgivings; and, above all, it explained the Order's presence here, now, when Sarevok and she expected it only, at the earliest, on the morrow.

**Jus' a walk, **the cat replied circumspectly as she watched a shadow of amusement encroach on her brother's face as he, too, realised what had happened here and what utter, utter fools they had both been. **Whassgoin' on? **Pangur repeated, clearly unsettled by the whole commotion.

She did not reply; because Anomen Delryn, meanwhile, said, "Thank you, Sir Ryan."

His voice was of a note which made the paladin start for a moment; promptly, though, Sir Ryan Trawl recovered, and said, "Yes. A dragon. An outlaw. A—second Bhaalspawn." He shot Imoen a look, more curious than hostile, if only for the moment. "All in all, almost exactly like the elf said. I only do not recognise the half-orc," he finished, turning his horse to face Kriemhild. The woman, for now, was petrified from fear at the sight of the holy warriors; Imoen wondered how much longer.

"'Tis the Lady—" Anomen started to say; and so, quickly, Imoen interrupted him. "She's my brother's wife."

"Wife?" The paladin eyed the woman from the height of his horse; and, suddenly, Kriemhild stopped looking half-human in her scarlet cloak, and started to look like a sorry, ugly beast draped in a red curtain. Imoen gritted her teeth, and said, "The marriage was witnessed by two humans, one of whom is a squire of your own order. It is as legal as it can possibly be."

"I see. Far be it for me to deny a man the right to a wife," Sir Ryan Trawl replied. "And, mayhap, it is an appropriate wife for the man— I do hope that you made sure that your widow will be properly provided for, Anchev," he said, turning to the man standing on the dragon's carcass.

"She will," that one replied, now with poise and calm. "If I am to be executed, all my possessions go to her, as you are well aware, paladin."

"Save your weapons in the moment of capture," the armoured man adjoined smoothly, casting a meaningful look at the hilt of the Edge of Chaos, still buried in Firkraag's neck. "That one will be destroyed."

The hilt of the sword was about a palm's length from Sarevok's injured hand; by now, it must have recovered from the initial shock, Imoen thought; and, once she did, she yelled, "No!"

Both men looked at her. "Ah," the paladin said. "The adamant champion strikes again. Your turn will come in a moment, girl. I do not sense any evil from you, but your presence in that outlaw's company requires an explanation—"

There was a brief cough. "Forgive my interruption, Sir Ryan," Anomen said, "but 'tis a matter which can be easily settled—had better be settled—now. My lady Imoen is innocent of whatever charge will be planted against Anchev. She has found herself in his presence by pure accident only. I can testify to this—I shall vouch for her, with my word, before the courts and before the gods, if 'tis necessary—"

The paladin shot him another startled look, this time much longer, much closer and much more in-depth. "I see," he said in the end. "If you are prepared to vouch for her, Delryn, then I will accept that, as I must. I can only hope that you have not been misled into trusting one unworthy of your credit."

Imoen smiled, for Anomen had been much assured and barely flustered as he had spoken to his superior, and, at that moment, deserved the epithet of an adamant champion himself, and neither in mock nor in jest. She would have smiled wider if not for the furtive look Anomen stole in her stone-faced, vindictive brother's direction when he was finished; and for what she was about to do now.

"Thank you," she said graciously to Sir Ryan. "I'm really innocent of whatever you're about to accuse my brother of. What are the charges against him, by the way?"

The man frowned. "In Baldur's Gate, high treason, warmongering, wilful and malicious conspiracy, reaving, robbery and murder. Also, business misconduct, tax evasion—"

"I think that we can omit the secondary charges for now," Imoen interrupted him, privately wincing. The list was, she must admit, impressive, even for her, who had been aware of all its items already; but then, Sarevok rarely did things partway. "I get the general picture, I think. He's to be tried in Baldur's Gate then, isn't he?"

The paladin frowned again, and she almost cursed. She was walking a very thin line here, given that only Anomen's word and reputation was protecting her now— "No," Sir Ryan Trawl said at last.

"No?" she said, opening her eyes wide, biting her lip, and sounding as girlishly disappointed as she dared; and earning herself odd looks from both Sarevok and Anomen. "Why not? I mean—"

"Your 'brother,' girl—if you must insist on calling him so—is a sly, devious and wily man," Sir Ryan Trawl interrupted, slightly gentler, even if, by now, he was rather visibly irritated. He must have envisioned the moment of arrest somewhat differently, without the arrestee standing smugly on top of a red dragon, and his innocent sister innocently asking questions of the arrester. "We do not want to risk his escaping on the way to Baldur's Gate; and there is no need to extradite him. Some of his crimes were intended also against the nation of Amn, and the Grand Dukes will be satisfied if he is punished here, even if some of the charges will not hold in the local court. He will be tried, judged and executed in the nearest city. Trademeet."

Under a giant wing, a nose and whiskers moved in sudden comprehension. **Execut'd? Kill'd, he means? But… The chick?! My chick!!!**

"Fitting," the paladin Sir Ryan Trawl, meanwhile, continued, entirely unmindful of a cat's tragedy, "given that, apparently, not few days ago, he tried to insinuate himself into the position of that city's saviour, too… A murderer is rarely capable of altering his method, I'm told."

Imoen filed away the information that Sir Ryan could not have been well informed in that particular field, since he was unaware that Sarevok had had a companion with him when he had entered Trademeet; and that that companion had had a very particular colour of hair; meanwhile, Anomen Delryn asked, betrayed, "He did?"

"Why, yes," the paladin replied coolly, "He appeared there, out of nowhere, several days ago, with the exact precise means to relieve the starving city of a trade embargo—" A long, deep and rolling sound interrupted him at this point; on top of the dragon, Sarevok was laughing, heartily, at his expense.

"Halt and desist, paladin," he told the enraged man once he was finished, "I would not that I be arrested by a fool; and you, I believe, would not that your people lost any respect they still have for you."

"It is not for you to decide what I do or do not, outlaw!" the man on the dark steed warned the man on the dragon. "What say you?! What have you for your defence, Anchev?!"

"I," said that one, devastatingly, "saved your city to retrieve my horse."

Imoen snorted. Given that those around her were all paladins, and could usually tell, with more or less precision, whether someone was telling the truth— There was smile and laughter in Anomen's eyes.

Sir Ryan Trawl ground a most unchivalrous word, and demanded, "And the slaying of the Lord Firecam and his troops?! Have you any convenient explanation for that, too, fiend?!"

"No," Sarevok said coldly, without a trace of his former amusement. "I did not swear not to kill my enemies, paladin. They attacked me; I defended myself. It was not my fault that you sent too few against me— Incidentally," he added, brightening and eyeing the armed crowd gathered under the dragon, "I cannot say that I am not flattered by the attention bestowed on me at present. I do hope, Trawl, that you have not deprived the unfortunate citizens of Athkatla of their only protectors against vampires for my private sake?"

"Bodhi's coven is destroyed," Sir Ryan Trawl snapped. He was losing control of the situation, and he clearly knew that, and did not enjoy that knowledge.

Sarevok, amiably, drew the stake into his radiant heart. "And Bodhi herself?"

"Escaped," the paladin commander fired at him, acidly; then, with a brisk move of the crossbow, ordered, "Off that dragon, Anchev. Now."

And with that one move, Sir Ryan instantly recovered control.

---

There was an expectant moment; at the end of which, Sarevok Anchev shrugged and started to descend a dragon; leaving behind his sword, embedded deeply in the dragon's neck; and his greensteel knife, which he had let his sister call, for the fun of the confusion, the Chaos Blade.

There was a moment of general consternation as, when he set his feet on the ground, a blurred grey-and-rosy ball darted from under a reptilian wing, clung to his leg, dashed up his back and sat on his shoulder; where it promptly started to wash its left forepaw.

Now, remember, Imoen admonished her spy, you're to look cute.

**Cute?! **the indignant cat replied, _**Cute?!**_

And no clawing people. They must like you. Try to rub on the most important one. He looks the type to like small, furry things.

**T'**_**humiliation.**_

It's for the chick, Imoen reminded him firmly as the paladin Ryan Trawl, who, fortunately, was not an unintelligent man, noted, "That cat is magical. It's a familiar."

"My brother has taken to wizardry," Imoen explained. "I hope that he might keep the cat? A wizard and his familiar should not be separated."

"And, should you decide that a spell-book is a weapon, paladin," her brother added calmly, "I advise you to recall the case—"

"No," the paladin replied evenly. "Your wife can keep it, Anchev. And you can keep the," his mouth twitched briefly: Sarevok with Pangur on the shoulder looked absolutely ridiculous, "familiar."

"Thank goodness," the Bhaalspawn replied, with almost no sarcasm in his voice. "May I speak to my wife, Trawl? Do you have an interpreter into orcish to monitor the conversation? She does not speak any other language."

On the horse, Sir Ryan frowned yet again, unsettled by his prisoner's composed tone, lack of resistance and reasonable request. "No, I don't. But yes, you may speak to her."

"I will divide our things in the meantime," Imoen offered.

"May I help you, my lady?" she heard; Anomen, who had been watching the previous proceedings thoughtfully, stirred up, and was now looking at her with hopeful plea in his handsome eyes; she smiled, and said, "Of course, Anomen. There is a part of the gems which is yours, too, in there."

Anomen turned to my lord Trawl. "My lord?"

"Yes, Delryn. You can go," the paladin said inattentively, frowning as he watched Sarevok, with a cat on the shoulder, approach his green-skinned wife and start to explain to her in orcish what was about to happen to him and to her.

---

In the bags, there were the chocolate grains and hot spices Sarevok and Anomen had found, discarded, in the orcs' caves—as Imoen had learnt that morning from her brother, orcs, like cats, didn't feel the taste of sweet things; fortunately for herself, Kriemhild took after her human mother in that regard— There were the gems Anomen had packed; Kriemhild's private possessions; two spell-books and a variety of diaries; some orcish potions and Adratha's potion-making book. There were almost no scrolls, since they had all been used up during the excursion; but there was a Calishite scimitar, a druidic staff, and an elf's fiery sword.

Imoen put the last two apart; they would be the tithe paid to ensure that the paladins would not treat Sarevok overly badly. The rest was Kriemhild's, and hers, and— One-fourth of the jewels belonged to Anomen Delryn.

"I'm sorry, my lady," the squire was now saying, with lowered head, and bitter self-reproach, "I—"

"You did your duty, Anomen," she told him, putting her hand on his shoulder; he cringed, and, belatedly, she realised that she put it precisely where Sarevok had put it earlier that day, in Firkraag's lair, over a holy sword, when he had teasingly made Anomen a knight. "You should never apologise for it. Ever."

The squire squirmed. "Aye, my lady, but—"

Imoen hugged him in response; his short, unshaved beard was scratching her face, and the steel of the plate armour of duty was cold, hard and inhuman. "You were supposed to learn this in a slightly different way, but—"

She blinked, sighed, and tried again. "Anomen. The land is yours. Farewell. Protect my brother, will you? Don't let them do anything to him. Please."

A glimmer of hope appeared in the empty, hungry eyes of an unloved, lonely man who had tasted acceptance and company, and had not remained unscathed by it, for he had repaid them with fulfilling his duty; but he said only, steadily, "Aye, my lady. I shall. And what will you do now?"

Imoen smiled. "I'm off to prepare a defence."

The squire frowned. "Defence? Is it even possible, my lady? On what grounds?"

Then, suddenly—perhaps seeing Imoen's face—he said, "Nay. Tell me not, my lady. I—I do not wish to know."

---

Then, there was another brief hug and another scratching beard as her brother lifted her, high, to his own level of seven feet of height, and she unclasped Aran Linvail's golden, powerful talisman and slid it onto her own neck. There was no telling when the acquaintance of the Shadowmaster of Athkatla might come into one's benefit; and she'd rather have something with which to introduce herself when she went to meet the genial man next time, even if she was now herself worth much more than a mere twenty thousand gold.

The paladins would stay in the gorge—there was the talk of skinning a dragon for scales; Imoen and Sarevok had both shrugged when Ryan Trawl had asked their permission to do so. As long as Anomen Delryn received his share of the hide, they had no objections; and nor did, after Sarevok asked her, Kriemhild Anchev. It was all, Imoen decided, a part of a tithe and mutual politeness.

She left Anomen Delryn with Sir Ryan Trawl, who was telling the squire that, verily, through slaying the dragon, Anomen had earned the holy sword Carsomyr the party had found in Firkraag's lair, and that he would himself be glad to present it to him after Anomen passed his Trials, since Sir Keldorn Firecam, his master, was dead; and then, asked the unmoved, unflustered man for the tale behind the lock of dark-green dryad's hair tied around his forearm—

A brief nod. "Brother."

---

A lone man was pacing through a room in the Asylum for Magical Deviants on the island of Brynnlaw.

Fifteen days.

A matter which could have once been solved in ten minutes had taken, so far, fifteen days. Perhaps Bodhi's advice had been… misguided.

The man could not feel true anger; but he was vaguely… irritated. Yes; that was the word.

He looked around.

At least the construction of the installation was almost complete.

---

In a forgotten crypt of Athkatla's oldest cemetery, a woman standing with her hands on her hips was eyeing playfully three caskets lying in a row.

She said, mischievously:

"Parissa. Valen. Del. My _daughters._"

She rolled the last word with utter _delight_.

---

A brief nod. "Sister." And the farewell was over.

Now, the sister was riding Deneb, and her sister-in-law was riding Grasshopper, and there was an eagle's cry high in the air above them.

Imoen stretched out her arm, and cried, "Altair!", and the eagle answered the call, and obeyed, and dove to meet the two other females, the half-human and the half-orc. Imoen could not fly a twenty-pound killer bird from her hand, herself; but Kriemhild could, and Imoen could almost speak to the woman, and to the eagle, and be understood.

She turned in her saddle when they were making the turn in the gorge, and cast one last look at the eyrie, and the red, worm-like body coiled under it, and the people swarming around it.

Candlekeep, she smiled. Back doors. Knights' attacks.

Not many lifelong inhabitants of Candlekeep had known where the catacombs under the citadel were, or how one accessed them; her brother, who had been there in person for a very short time only, had managed to learn that.

Sarevok, for evil or, sometimes, good, did have a way of getting into places and to people. Perhaps that was why she had been so protective of Anomen; because her brother had gotten to her, and she knew, every step of the way, that, in their game of tug of war, her brother and she were evenly balanced; that, just as she was pulling him up, he was pulling her down.

Anomen had chosen rightly, the righteous path and the path of duty, and was now receiving his own punishment for it; but she— She could not.

You're corrupting me, brother, she thought with unbearable sweetness; Now, I may not have to break the law for you, but, if I have to, I will break the law, and, perhaps, I will become an outlaw myself, because, now, I will not let the law kill you; because, now, I want you to live, not the justice to prevail.

Why can't the justice be instead— Talion, perhaps? An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but, instead of a death for a death, a life for a life: a life saved for a life destroyed? A city for a city— Shouldn't this be enough? No; it shouldn't. But this will have to be enough; because I want you to live, and I will not let the law kill you.

There will be a castling.

But a castling, too, can go two ways. And castling to the kingside is more secure than castling to the queenside— I wonder if you will dare; because you will have to choose, at last.

I will save your life, brother; but you, in turn, will have to choose what to do with it.

I will not live with you if you do not choose right.

**End of Part IV: Knights' Attack.**


	30. V: Queenside Castling, 1

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**1**

When Anomen Delryn, on the day when he had passed his Trials and the eve of his solitary vigil in the main hall of the Athkatlan headquarters of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart, learnt of Sarevok Anchev's escape from the Trademeet city arrest not five days after the man's capture—he was not surprised.

Instead, he smiled, sadly; after all, he had known this particular news beforehand. The Lady Imoen had as much as told him this would happen as she had left her familiar with her brother.

He should have informed his superiors of what she had not told him; and of what he knew about the cat— He did not. Instead, he tried to approach a snarling, furious prisoner.

"I swore to the Lady Imoen that I would protect Anchev, Sir Ryan—" "Keep your man away from me, Trawl, lest you lose him completely."

The prisoner had been bound; but the prisoner was a cunning, powerful and aggressive man and a Bhaalspawn; the prisoner certainly needed no protection, and if the prisoner set his mind on killing the one instrumental to his capture, he could just manage it, Sir Ryan Trawl decided, and forbid his disconsolate subordinate all contact with the prisoner.

There were… questions, instead: then, on the road, and later, in Athkatla, before the praise of the superiors and the admiration of the equals came. They were very specific questions, questions which must perhaps be asked before the Trials, when the gods looked into one's mind, one's heart and one's soul to find one worthy; or not. The paladins of the Order of Most Radiant Heart believed in their gods, truly; but they also believed in their job. And that one should not bother the gods without a good reason.

And so, on the day after he returned to Athkatla, Anomen Delryn was called in to present a very thorough report of all he had done in the company of a murderer and his Bhaalspawn sister. He had not murdered; he had not gone against his creed; he had sought divine counsel in the business, and had been granted the permission to cooperate; he had been chaste, and obedient, and faithful; he was clean; he was clean; he was clean… He could be admitted before the face of the gods, and the detailed tale left his distant relative the Prelate Wessalen and his immediate commander Sir Ryan Trawl all the more impressed—

But he wanted Sarevok Anchev.

With each question asked, with each recollection remembered, with each tale told, the want, the need, the… emptiness, grew. Amongst praise, admiration, and not a little bit of envy; that, and a barony, and a sword, and wealth, and fame, and even his father's appreciation—even if more of his wealth and fame than of himself—in short, among everything he had ever wanted, Anomen Delryn lacked this sole thing; and this, he was discovering, was the one necessary thing.

There was a gap in his life—throbbing and painful, so abysmal and empty, he had even, cautiously, in a desperate attempt to forget, to forego, considered an accusation once thrown in his face by his sneering father; and found it utterly disgusting— But he wanted the man, who, like all, had first accepted him into his company, and then had rejected him, in the end; but, perhaps, from his own perspective, had had a very good reason for the rejection; better than everyone else in his life thus far, Anomen found himself thinking rebelliously.

He was being found good enough for the gods and the people, at last; but he was finding he wanted neither the gods nor the people. There were things more important in life than duty, he was discovering; or, at least, things more important in his life. There were some things in life worth fighting for, and duty was not the most important of them, not by a long shot. It is a terrible thing to discover when one's entire life, one had wanted peace, law and order, and one had tried to follow and fulfil one's duty; but his duty had been to tell that the familiar had not been the brother' familiar; and his duty had been to learn what the sister had been planning, and report it afterwards; there was no escaping that he had not fulfilled it, that he felt good with it, and that he wanted more. Perhaps, while he had been constantly refusing to follow his father's path, he had done nothing but follow his mother's tales, he caught himself thinking—

He was now alone, in the main hall of the Radiant Heart, eyeing the giant sword Carsomyr which had, mayhap, become a symbol to him; it had been when they had first found it that Sarevok had told him that, when the two of them met, and Anomen was a paladin, they would fight. Which— 'Twas unthinkable.

The Bhaalspawn had vanished; no one knew where he had gone; Anomen was one of the first to learn of it in Athkatla, because he was called to report once again: perhaps he could recall something? Perhaps he had heard anything, anything at all about whither the outlaw had intended to go next to spread his noxious influence? Nay; and so, only a small, rudimentary force would be dispatched to follow, because the Order had few people and a multitude of tasks; and, sooner or later, the outlaw would resurface, somewhere, and be reported. He was not an inconspicuous man.

Privately, Anomen Delryn did not know whither Sarevok Anchev was now headed; but he knew where he could be found one day.

He smiled, stood up from his knees, picking in passing his simple mace and his family shield; and then, walked away, closing the gilt door and leaving the grand sword and the Radiant Heart behind.

---

On the eventide of the sixteenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, Imoen of Candlekeep, thief, wizard, adventuress and Bhaalspawn, entered the city of Trademeet, alone.

Her sister-in-law, Gudrun Anchev, known also by her human name of Kriemhild, she had left outside the town, with the druid envoys. The newly elected chieftain of the druid tribe, Cernd, who had once been a city man himself, decided, in view of the recent misfortunes which had affected his people, to establish a semi-permanent embassy in Trademeet, for the purpose of preventing any such similar quarrels for as long as prevented they could be. In the end, the world would turn and change and either Trademeet or the druid tribes would perish, and something new would come in their place; but that did not justify not making an effort at present, for now.

And since the High Merchant Lord Logan Coprith was a reasonable man, an embassy was established in a forest on the fringes of the city; therein, now, the druid envoys resided, occasionally selling herbal remedies to the city populace; therein, now, the Lady Anchev would lodge, having, for company, her husband's hunting bird, called an-Nasr at-Taïr; Altair, for short. The druids offered little protest; the Lady's sister-in-law had been Cernd's friend, once.

Given the half-orc's reaction to any larger crowd of humans she encountered, Imoen found this a vastly preferable option to forcing the woman to enter the city for no important reason. Kriemhild was not a witless beast; her brother had chosen his bride with care; but— Not everything at once, Imoen thought; and sighed, privately, eyeing the green skin, and the thick, coarse, black body hair, and the black, hard eyes, and the boar-like tusks, and the indelicate muscles, and the fire-hardened bones lacing the leather armour, and the heavy boots, and the dragon helmet and the dragon shield; and, finally, the bone club in the scarlet, royal sheath under the scarlet, royal cloak which had once been a dragon's. There were elves, and half-elves; and there were orcs, and half-orcs.

But, though her looks were not Kriemhild's fault, the woman was uncivilised, untaught and homicidal. Sarevok had ordered her to follow Imoen, a command which his wife had accepted with her usual obedient, terrified calm; but, once the half-orc's nerves were strained enough, and her wild, untamed anger burst out, there was no telling what she might do. And Imoen's mission in Trademeet was a particularly delicate one.

She met the Lady Itona, the chief overseer of the Shadow Thieves' operations in Trademeet who had not liked Imoen since she had first laid her eyes on Sarevok Anchev's sister; but, since Sarevok Anchev was her superior Aran Linvail's own current favourite, and also, in possession of information regarding the majority of the Thieves' recent operations, within and without Amn—the Lady sent forth a laconic missive to Athkatla. Then, she ordered all of Anchev's possessions in her house: his clothes and his weapons, his gems, and jewels, and cameos, and favourite, costly fragrances—to be delivered together with his sister's to the sister's lodgings. Imoen was to return on the morrow for her answer; for now, she went shopping.

A half-orc washed, combed and dressed in human clothes would look, hopefully, half-human, to some, if not to all; and Imoen needed scrolls. If she had learnt one thing during her recent outing with her brother, it was this one: magic.

---

On the midday of the seventeenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, Sarevok Anchev, warrior, mage, murderer and Bhaalspawn, entered the city of Trademeet in the escort of some ten or twenty true paladin knights, a squire, and a cat.

Two hours later, his sister received the reply of Athkatla's Shadowmaster. Aran Linvail was very pleased and extremely interested in hearing again from the charming young woman in whose company Sarevok had re-entered his life and had left Athkatla; and he was sending to Trademeet some of his best hands: Mitsu, and Arkanis, and Pelanna, forthwith; them, and also his best solicitors. They would all be in Trademeet—not on the morrow; but within two days, for the trial's start.

The majority of the knights hied on that day to Athkatla; and, with them, Anomen Delryn. He and Imoen did not meet.

---

On the morning of the eighteenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, a cat by the name of Pangur found a dead grasshopper.

This is, by now, a fairly important event in the life of one Sarevok Anchev, imprisoned for half a day and a night in what, as far as he is concerned, might as well be an oubliette, and what is a cell in the dungeons of the Trademeet council building.

He has been to more interesting prisons; one of those was that of the wizard Joneleth Irenicus. But to a mind used to action, forced repose is another torture; and he has already taken the prisoner's usual recourse: in the uterine, silent penumbra of the solitary cell, Sarevok Anchev slept, and dreamt—

—Falling; falling impossibly fast down a shaft of light; down an impossibly deep well, surrounded on all sides by tiers upon tiers of an impossibly high tower; and on each tier, the statues.

Siblings. Family.

He had been falling impossibly fast; but, feather-light in a place where gravity is a matter of naught but convention and habit, when he landed, he landed effortlessly, on his feet, and with neither sound nor harm.

He looks around: a wind, now chill, now dry and scalding hot, sweeps across the empty void, screaming in his ears its hearty welcome. Glittering dust of emerald ichor swirl and dance over ivory bowls set in the shadows of opaque nothingness; all pools are nearly empty, but none will remain so much longer. Space itself is alien and inhuman.

Home.

There is a figure in the distance, combing through the ichor in one of the less empty basins; he sets towards it. There is no use delaying the meeting, he had learnt long ago.

He starts, for a moment, when he is halfway through the expanse and when he can finally discern the figure's features; but, promptly, he snarls, strides to it and backhands it, viciously.

"You forgot the scars, Father," he tells his sister's face. "Again."

"So, which one will it be tonight?" he demands as the broken face looks back at him with pure loathing, "Threaten or cajole? I did not overlook the surreptitious lack of blood in my eyes the last time we met— What was it that you wanted me to see so clearly, Father? Torm's paladins, arriving to take out your rubbish in accordance with your deathbed wish?"

The figure, who is not Imoen, and Imoen is still alive, coughs out the blood and snorts. "Scars. Who needs them?"

Sarevok considers; in the end, he shrugs. "Imoen would, I believe, say that they remind her that she is half a human."

"And you, my son?"

"They are hers. I respect her opinion."

"Do not attempt to misconstrue me, son. That pitiful excuse of a wizard left his mark on you as well."

There is a longer silence; at the end of which, the man says, calmly, "My man says that he does not abhor them."

"And you respect his opinion. But your scars are—as you so aptly put it a moment ago, son—yours to decide what to do with them."

Sarevok laughs, and says, "They exist, Father. And some fools even say that they lend character to my features."

As he dies, again, this time to his dwarven sister's bone dagger, he wonders just what Imoen has done that would warrant this particular overture of peace.

---

The cat found a dead grasshopper in a remote corner of the cell, and brought it to him. It must be one of those sent to Trademeet by Faldorn, Sarevok thinks as he smiles at the dirty cobwebs on Pangur's whiskers.

Grasshoppers turn into locusts when there are too many of them, he thinks as he studies curiously the insect's dried, desiccated corpse. They are normal, completely normal, and then, one day, if there are too many of them in one place, one of the crowd grows mad; that first one infects the others, one by one; they all transform, and there is a plague. Perhaps it will be like that with the kin; perhaps, one day, when enough siblings fulfil their destiny and answer Father's call—the rest will awaken to a murder-drenched, blood-soaked day; and will blindly, swarm-like, follow; and that will be the day when the rivers of the Sword Coast will run with blood— Perhaps he has been nothing but a premature grasshopper.

Or, perhaps, that first, that mad one, the one which infects the others and will be the one to have set off the plague; starting from Imoen, scarred on her mind, her soul and her body.

He leans against the cold wall, considering: the kin has to perish. This is the one part of the prophecy which is clear. And there have been evil gods and evil symbols, invoked apotropaically, for defence, in history: a plague god appealed to to ward off plague. An eye painted on a ship to avoid the evil eye. There is a nugget of an idea there, somewhere: wherefore should not a god of murder ascend his throne by murdering the murderers?

Wine would, perhaps, help find the answer; in wine, after all, lies the truth. Wine relaxes and releases, like desire, or, better yet, murder; but wine is wine. With due care and consideration, it is possible to apply just enough and exactly enough of it to make the leap from methodical, inductive conjecture and inference into oracle and prophecy, and divine glimpses of the presence and the future without letting Father hurt the human self; humans have used wine for prophecy for centuries.

But too much wine, and all else follows; in wine lies the truth, but in wine lies also the anger. Angry drunks. Pathetic murderers. Rieltar ordering her death. What had been her name? He cannot recall. Irenicus has it, and her face, and her touch, and the sound of her voice. There had been once a woman, who had been my foster father Rieltar's concubine, and she had lived, and she died, because he ordered her death, because he thought that she was cheating on him, with me, and I remember that I had called her my mother, and I do not remember her face, or her name, or her voice, or her touch, or anything of her. She had existed; she died; and I had Rieltar killed, in the end.

"I believe," Sarevok tells the cat, who is looking at him with his clear blue eyes, "that it might be a profitable endeavour to attempt and establish a simple means of at least fundamental communication. What says you?"

The cat crooks his head, and appears to be considering the problem; and so, the man, quite amused at his own folly, continues, "I am aware that you understand me, cat; the task, therefore, lies in making me understand you. While I do appreciate the ample repertoire of purrs, hisses, chirps and meows, I would welcome something more unequivocal. I suggest a single lick of the right forepaw for yes, of the left forepaw for no. We can take it from there. Are we in agreement?"

The cat purrs, and licks the right forepaw.

"Has my sister established contact with you?"

The cat, thoughtfully, licks his right forepaw; then, his left, biting each and every of his claws; and then, he jumps into the man's lap, and demands to be scratched.

Sarevok laughs at this impudence; then, he complies, and, as he does, he dives into the maelstrom of thought again.

Imoen is there, with all her scars, again— Imoen has left the cat as hostage, but the cat is a gift from him; as far as he is aware, she does not back off on her word; but from saying that one wants one to live to going against all for an enemy's and a kinsman's sake, the road is long. He weighs the two sides of the balance. They weigh the same.

He seeks Altair; but Altair is not there. She exists; or a throbbing, distant feeling of her does; but no more; nothing else. He cannot see through her sharp, far-seeing eyes; he can see no further than the limits of his silent cell.

The cat nudges him with his head, because the man stopped scratching him for a moment; the man smirks, scoops the cat with the palm of his hand, so that Pangur is spread flatly on it, and his four paws and his tail are dangling around it; and lifts him to look into his eyes. They are almost like—no, not like Irenicus'; like Aran's.

Aran will certainly not leave him behind, if only to send his assassins after him. He misses the Shadowmaster of Athkatla, painfully so, and extremely physically; that one is not an unsophisticated man, is an intelligent man, a man to be respected; a man who understood the hunger of a mind and the weakness of a body freshly out of prison and utter impotence. Aran settles his debts; casts his geas; and then, offers one people to command, a task to prove that one's mind still functions, and enough eager, impatient patience to uncoil that tightly wound worm of doubt and worry deep within, and find out that one is still a man if one chooses to, that Irenicus did not affect the body lastingly—

Aran— Sarevok smiles; Aran… understands. He has his own people, and his own goals, and his own life, and enough ruthlessness, and cruelty, and cunning, to be as much of an uninvolved, casual, equal partner as one can have in a casual partnership of equals when one is anything more than a petty merchant selling vegetables at a market stall. It is good that Aran exists, and that they have, for now, a common goal; and that the paladins destroyed their enemies, if not their enemy— Yet, though Aran exists, so does the geas. None will stand in the path of the Bhaalspawn's destiny; not Aran Linvail; not Tamoko; not Anomen Delryn.

The cat, fairly offended by the kitten-like treatment, scrambles to stand on top of the palm; then, he swishes his tail, and, looking at the man irately, jumps off to the cell's floor and, sulkily, retreats far away.

Sarevok adjusts himself more comfortably on the cold stone, as well as his large bulk permits him; and thinks further—

The trouble with Anomen Delryn has been that it has been love; or, at least, its short-term, unfulfilled part, which is desire…

…to kiss him senseless; to bed him senseless; to spoil him senseless, and to make him one's own, and to make him worship oneself, as man and as god; to give him everything he may want and to ruffle his rough, unsmooth hair— Unwanted and immature; not at all like the easy, amiable camaraderie of two accomplices. Frustrating enough to warrant the pre-emptive application of a lofty, exaggerated, disproportionate code term, just in case, just to activate all the emergency procedures, not to be caught unguarded again; not like that first time. Frustrating for its offensive crudeness; vulgar tales of unrequited love earn the daily bread of the cheapest bards, and to find oneself the pining hero of one has been degrading, at best.

The only cure for love, the mocking bards sing, is to have it returned. Either that, or time; with time, everything passes, thankfully, and even the memory of his squire's sharp, male, acrid odour at dawn, as the two of them fight and Anomen sweats—

Sarevok smiles yet again, this time utterly, completely amused: Like a cur in rut, he remembers Rieltar Anchev's saying.

He stands up, goes to the furthest corner of the cell, and relieves himself.

Wiping his hands, watching the quickly disappearing consequences of his humanity, he thinks, furiously, as yet another thought comes to him, Now, that one mistake of yours, I will not repeat, Father. Not even if I force myself to rape my so-called wife; not even then. Murderers should never have children. The son of a murderer can only grow up to be a murderous bastard himself.

Then, he sleeps.

---

He wakes up when the cat leaps onto his chest and scratches him on the neck; soon, there is Imoen opening his cell—

She is wearing an ankle-length, almost prim dove-grey dress with black trimmings; there is a black lace mantilla on her shoulders and a string of black pearls on her neck; her hair is done up and hidden under a little, smart black hat with crow's wing, garnets and rubies, and her scars are hidden under a layer of discreet, unpretentious make-up—

—in a word, as far as Sarevok is concerned, his sister went to great, fashionable, and extremely expensive, lengths to make herself ten to fifteen years older, and ten to fifteen times less attractive than she really is; if he saw her on a street, he would devote a moment to estimate her worth: forty to fifty thousand, at the lower end—and then would not give her a second look.

The last lock won't budge; she sighs, pulls something from her sleeve, and starts to cast an incantation. When finally the door lets go, she marches into the cell, and nods to him coolly. "Little brother."

"Little sister," he replies, level, indolent and unconcerned as Imoen smiles at her cat and scratches him behind the ear. Then, she takes off the hat, unpins her hairdo and shakes her head; she has dyed her hair carrot orange, and put many more small braids in it than the two or three to which he is accustomed. Then, she starts to take the dress off, with that vague sort of discomfort that is less in her face than in her moves; and so, he looks away, that his sister might decide that she does not mind, not really, undressing in her brutal brother's presence.

The dress has one of their bags of holding sewn under its lining.

"Shave cleanly," Imoen orders, pulling out and passing to him a flask of water, small scissors, a razor, a mirror and a bar of soap. "Your clothes," she adds; they are made of roughly woven wool and hide toughened into a dark armour, stink as if they belonged to some relative of Kriemhild's, and will be minimally too small for him. "And your charm," she finishes, unclasping Aran's golden keepsake from her neck.

"The guards downstairs are all knocked out," she says calmly as she quickly starts to put on her own change of clothes: a far less prudish affair in azure and gold, and precisely too large for her to be her own. She must have stolen it.

"We'll make ourselves invisible until we'll charm those two upstairs," she adds as she starts to apply the make-up which makes her face thinner, longer and completely unlike her own. She does not do it well; he had never seen her paint herself before, not even the last time they were here, in Trademeet.

For that matter, I have never seen her in three-inch-high heels before, either, he thinks, amused, as Imoen buttons up the kidskin ankle boots, saying, "Then, we'll walk out. You'll have to be silent, pretend that you have stomach-ache, and keep your eyes closed, brother, until I will tell you you can open them. You'll use a wizard eye instead."

"Why won't we stay invisible instead, sister?" he asks as he finishes shaving and starts to change into the clothes whose odour of unwashed body is just strong enough to hide his own.

"Because there are paladins in the building, and because the main doors are guarded on both sides, brother," Imoen replies, putting on a short cape which matches the dress in colour and which, conveniently enough, blurs her features lightly. "And because we're not killing anyone tonight if we're found out. That's the condition, brother. We're just… walking out. Most people should be upstairs, watching the auction."

"Auction, sister?"

"Long story, brother. Ready? Now, come here—" He feels the cold touch of ink on his face as she paints something on top of his eyelids. Fake eyes, perhaps; just enough to show faintly under the helmet which he will put on. Then, there is another touch on his cheek and his forehead; and then, as she presents the simple helmet to him, Imoen says, "Let's go."

He freezes; she frowns. "What of my sword, sister?"

"We have the rukh's scimitar… It's not enough, is it?" his sister asks, with that small twist of the mouth which means that she does not enjoy the direction his thoughts are taking, and which looks out of place on the unfamiliar face she is wearing now.

"No," he says curtly. "It is not." He will not mind if he loses the Burning Earth, or, overly, the old druid's staff; but the Edge of Chaos is his. As simple as that.

His sister smiles at last. "And I'd better refrain from any dirty jokes, hadn't I, brother? They put you right next to the treasury, you know… Let's really go."

---

The stack of scrolls of the knock spell assures him that his sister knows him well enough to have suspected where one of the few uncomfortable limits of his pragmatism lie. And when they find both his sword and his knife amidst the piles of the Trademeet city treasure, Imoen does not even insist on putting the sword into the bag of holding; instead, without a word, she pulls out of it a very rough sheath for him to use in place of the usual one, and a bit of hide to tie around the hilt.

The blade, therefore, has been a part of the disguise from the beginning, and his sister simply checked whether she could force him into openly admitting one of his weak points to her; as, indeed, she could and as, indeed, she did. He wonders why she found the particular play and the particular timing fitting; and if he still has the right to resent it and retaliate in kind, or if it would make him, somehow, a bad loser who did not get a joke; but it was not a joke. She was testing him, again, as he used to test her, and as they used to test each other.

There is some vague… bitter disappointment more than anger, somewhere; but he is currently being rescued.

"The sack, too, brother," his sister is telling him now, eyeing him critically as she is sitting on top of a stack of gold ingots, dangling her short legs in her short azure skirt. "Pangur, into the bag. Don't peek out."

Later, invisible, they leave the treasury, go past all the other cells in the dank, torch-lit stone dungeon, where the other prisoners, those who can be kept together, and not in solitary confinement, are limply sitting; and then, past the guards' room, where the four men are all asleep over their cards and wine. ("A stinking cloud and some sleeping darts," Imoen stated laconically before they set off.)

Their invisibility dispels when they dominate the two guards at the top of the stairs and order the sentries to think that they will see them not ascending the rough, stone stairs leading out of the prison, but rather descending the nearby wide, marble, carpeted stairs leading to the first floor. Imoen, apparently, discarded her earlier impractical objections to charming their supposedly fellow humans; her brother finds this intriguing as he summons his wizard eye. The eye peeks out; and, once the only other person in the almost empty lobby leaves, they enter.

Halfway through the hall, they sense and see two paladins coming out of a side corridor. The pair is without armour, but definitely armed; and, on seeing the two people, one of whom is pretending to have stomach-ache, they move straight towards them.

"What happened, my child?" the middle-aged woman asks with interested worry.

"It is nothing, Madam Paladin," Imoen says in a slightly hesitant, awed voice whose accent corresponds with the quality of her dress. "I think that the local food didn't go well with my big friend here. We're going outside for a walk in fresh air."

"Perhaps we may help?" the young man supplies. "If we laid hands on thy comrade—"

"No, really, it's not necessary," Imoen interrupts quickly as Sarevok silently curses all do-gooders and their untimely offers of help. "To tell the truth, I don't think—I don't think that he is much used to being inside," she finishes in a conspiratorial, operatic whisper seasoned with a fair measure of an almost aristocratic scandal. "Aerie said—" she adds, slightly louder, as he groans in mock pain, and doubles lightly, "—Oh. Excuse me. We'd better get going."

"Aye," the woman says as the man is beginning to frown; something alerted him to some incongruence in the scene. Possibly, the unexplained darkness in his interlocutors' souls; or possibly, Sarevok's invisible wizard eye, hovering impertinently not five steps in front of his righteous head.

"Pass to Mazzy the best regards from Elanor Argrim, will you, girl?" the woman says, with a smile. "I'm not sure if I manage to catch her today, and we fought once together."

"I will," Imoen promises; and the siblings move on, as, behind them, the male paladin starts, almost inaudibly, to chant a prayer.

They are passing another pair of guards and opening the building's entrance door when Sarevok's spell goes its way and the wizard eye disappears, leaving him in darkness and almost, by reflex, opening his real eyes to see and be discovered. He manages to overcome the impulse, and thus does not see the perplexed paladin's face as the man finishes his chant, discovers no invisible creature around, and is promptly smacked over the head by his partner Elanor; but Imoen does. She takes her brother lightly by the arm; together, the siblings walk out through the massive ebony door, down the fifteen low stairs, past the last pair of guards, straight about a hundred steps, and round a corner to the right.

"You can open your eyes now, brother," Imoen says, not sounding at all relieved.

---

It is night; they are now several streets away from the magistrate; and Kriemhild is waiting for them with the horses when they shed their invisibility again. She hands him Deneb's and Grasshopper's reins.

"_Halarn narrgh-shr'ha?"_ he growls at her in orcish. _Are you coming, bondswoman?_

"This one, esteemed husband, begs to be excused for not accompanying him in his travel. The—" a brief hesitation; a sister is a female, but his wife knows that his sister is not treated like an orcish female; eventually, she settles on, "The Imoen will hopefully be perhaps kind enough to be pressed upon to explain why, as soon as possible," she finishes, and disappears behind a corner as he weighs up in his mind that Kriemhild is wearing decent, human clothes under her scarlet cloak; and that, apart from her father's bone club and the scimitar he gave her, she also has a crossbow; and Imoen's archer's bracers.

Imoen and Kriemhild understand each other adequately, then, he thinks as he follows his sister and her cat out of the city through the open southern gates; soon, they are on the dark Athkatlan road, lit only by the light of the gibbous moon; following an eagle who has joined them, silently and with barely a word of greeting, just outside the town.

There appears to exist a female conspiracy to keep him uninformed, he smirks; and considers. The Mazzy mentioned must be that halfling whose party Imoen once planned to join, Mazzy—

"Mazzy Fentan, brother," Imoen says quietly, slowing to a canter in the middle of the dark forest which stretches south to the druid lands which are barred to him; the uneven road here is barely visible in the weak light she summoned. "She was the one who organised the charity auction to fund the local school. I—"

Suddenly, she sighs, halts her mare altogether, and asks, "Have you ever considered asking me to undo the geas cast on you, brother?"

The question is sudden enough, and unexpected enough, that he also halts Grasshopper. "More than once," he admits, truthfully, hoping that the truth will set him free. "Why do you ask, sister?"

"When we were leaving Athkatla, too?" she demands, and he finds himself scowling here, in this darkness, this windless forest, these sounds of woods and Altair's wings and the neighing and the dancing of horses; in this weak light which, if there is any pursuit organised after them, will tell the pursuers that someone is here. It is not the best of moments for heart-to-heart chats, he should tell the little sister, who already knows it; instead, he says, "Perhaps. I do not remember. I do not believe so. Why do you ask?" he repeats as he begins to understand why; and then, he adds, with almost uncontained anger, "I told you to leave this matter alone, sister."

"Why?" she demands. "So that I would not learn what the geas is about? I did, you know," she says; accuses him more than says, and he refuses to let himself be accused. "By the way," she digresses suddenly, "Aran offered me to take your place as his Bhaalspawn pet when his assassins would kill you tomorrow."

"I remember, you know: when you were taking me from Athkatla, you said there was a reason. That you would let me figure it out on my own," she speaks as, slowly, they motion their horses back into a canter and he thinks about Aran Linvail and Imoen, and how he wants his man to stay his man, and his sister, his sister. "That it would be eating me— It was, you know. But even when you finally told me, when we were telling each other stuff, here, in Trademeet, you didn't say a word about a geas. Not a word."

"It did not appear particularly relevant at that point, sister," he says, calmly, because he cannot really say how he feels; hot and cold and bitter— He tries to fit words to the feelings he had learnt in Irenicus' palace: disappointed. Frightened. Angry— None of them fits; and so, he adds, "We were parting, as I recollect."

"And since then?" Imoen demands. She is angry: frowning and scowling; with her, it is easy to tell what she thinks, even in the weak light, even under that alien, carrot-haired face, even as she's riding Deneb and he's riding Grasshopper.

"How do you imagine I should break it to you, sister?" Now, he does know, exactly, what he feels: he feels desperate, feels like laughing. "Once, you were a Shadow Thief, and, unless Aran Linvail allows me to, I cannot kill a known Shadow Thief without dying myself? That is, incidentally, part of why we are sitting here together, drinking wine as you accost me to ask whether my intentions towards Delryn are honourable? Perhaps you should consider whether this omission was, indeed, inauspicious," he almost barks at her, resentfully, as he spurs Grasshopper on. "But for it, you wouldn't have a brother."

"I wouldn't—? You wouldn't have a sister to pull you out of prison, Sarevok," she fires back as she spurs Deneb to follow him.

"I wouldn't have a sister to put me in one," he retorts easily, because the retort is obvious.

Imoen is cold now, very cold, almost as cold as she is when she is her other self; she holds back Deneb, forcing him to hold back Grasshopper, and, looking at him, says, "Fine. You are going to Athkatla now, aren't you?"

"Aren't you?" he rejoins just before he remembers a name: Mazzy Fentan. Then, he answers his own question. "No. You aren't. You are going to join that merry halfling's do-gooders' troupe, are you not, sister?" He laughs. "Do they know who you are? Did you find it in yourself to tell them?"

"They know who you are, brother," Imoen snaps back at him. "They just came from Baldur's Gate, you know."

He freezes then; then, unfreezing, strikes back, "Yet they took pity on a murderer… and I should be grateful to them for their folly, should I not? Is that it, sister?"

"No, brother," Imoen interrupts him, with the viciousness of sudden fatigue. "It's not. Do what you wish. I don't think I care. Deneb is still mine, isn't she?"

He looks at his sister, and thinks that, if he returns to Athkatla, free, Aran, Aran the thief and the politician, Aran will take him back; that in Athkatla is Bodhi, who escaped the paladins—or, at least, it is there that he should start searching for her, because it is there that the vampire was last seen; that Aran's underlings must have found their way back to Irenicus' laboratory under Waukeen's Promenade already; that that way is power, and revenge, and patricide, and a throne.

"Yes," he replies curtly. "She is."

They ride on, in silence, at leisure, through the darkness, through the forest, following Altair; until, unable to bear his curiosity any longer, he asks, without feeling, without looking at Imoen, "What will you be doing with the halfling, sister?"

"You mean, brother, what do merry do-gooders do when they are not busy breaking outlaws out of prisons on the one condition that nobody dies in the process?" Imoen asks in turn, and she is still angry, and tired, and sad, and not in any small measure disappointed. "A courier came to Trademeet today from one of the villages nearby… Imnesvale, I think, it's called. In the Umar Hills. They have some problems, they wouldn't explain what with, precisely, and we're going there to help them. And there won't be much in the way of payment, either, I don't think— These are not mercenaries, brother. They cleared out Durlag's Tower, if you know where that is, and then went on a sea trip and found Balduran's ship, but mostly, they don't do adventuring for fun or money, but to help people. To help people they don't know," she repeats, highly, loudly, enunciating—driving each word like a white-hot nail into his mind; she wants to make a point.

"I know," he replies, as conciliatorily as he can, "I heard the stories, too, sister. Fentan can be difficult, they say."

Imoen shrugs, and now, she is definitely more disappointed than angry. "No more than you, brother, I think. If someone challenges her. And she can't exactly count on your physical assets."

Curious, he ignores the barb. "How did you convince her?"

"I told her, brother, that there is a chance that one day, you would be a good man," Imoen states flatly, with lethal calm, and there is a mutual silence as she must be waiting for his ridicule, and he does not want to ridicule her, not now. They should not part in anger, and she already knows what he is thinking. That is why she is silent.

"I thought so," she picks up, morosely, a moment later, "for a moment, you know, when I was leaving you with Trawl— It's been ten days today, brother," she digresses, suddenly. "I even looked into my diary, because it feels like so much longer… But it's been ten days. We left Athkatla ten days ago. So, I thought— They are not silly people. They just want— like— prefer to help other people," she changes the topic again, and because she does, and is shaken, he replies, carefully maintaining a level tone of voice, "Are you implying that you believed that I might want to join them, sister?"

"I'm saying that they said they would take you, brother," Imoen replies curtly, and now, the laughter almost breaks out again; apparently, he has been found to be good enough for a troupe of adventurers.

He does not; and for a moment, there is only the pit-a-pat of the horses' hooves. What is a tenday of humanity next to an eternity of divinity?

"It's like chess, really," his sister says, meanwhile, now blatant in her attempt to manipulate him. "You can castle on the kingside, or on the queenside— The kingside is more secure, of course, but… Aren't you even curious what it's like, brother?"

Now, he is extremely, genuinely surprised: it all lies in the hidden, unconscious semantics of the wording— For there to be a queenside and a kingside, there first has to be a side; apparently, they are one. Even if the little sister, he smirks, ascribed to herself the more powerful role… But the king, my fair sibling, is more important.

"It's one of those places where people either live all life or go to lose themselves. Imnesvale. No one cares for it, as long as they pay their taxes. That's why Mazzy and us have to go help them. Because no one else will— But I don't want to spoil this, either," the little sister dithers again, as if slightly embarrassed; but she simply must mention the matter aloud. It is important to her. "I want to stay with them, for a bit, you know."

This is the one important question he, in turn, must ask. "Hence, sister, you intend to hold me accountable for every single one of my moves? Question my motives at each and every turn? Treat me as if I were still a prisoner, if on a parole?"

Imoen, extremely, genuinely surprised, delivers the earnest, honest, candid killing blow. "I didn't know that my trust is so important for you, brother."

Sarevok finally laughs, wildly, with release; and asks, "Where is your rook, sister?"

---

Afterwards, there is a long, silent ride in the darkness, following the sound of an eagle's wings: first, west, to the border of the forest; then, north, on the forest's edge; then, north-east, through fields and meadows and small copses of trees, keeping away from any houses and circling the city of Trademeet from afar.

Then, they find a road; a path rather than a road, unpaved and easy to miss; they ride north up it, for a moment, until Altair and Imoen notice some landmark he does not; for then, they all leave the road—

There is a grove, a dell, a stream; and, finally, a fire, and voices, and faces, and the clatter of drawn weapons.

"Who goes?" a commanding female voice demands.

"Murder," Imoen answers briefly, with relief; he can not read her face, with its spoilt, smeared make-up, well enough to see how much heart there is in the jest, or if it is a jest at all.

They halt and dismount; there are six faces around the fire. He is not surprised to see Kriemhild here, and the unarmed, ugly boy, more likely than not, is the courier sent to Trademeet for help; the rest—

"Little brother…"

This is important to me. Do not spoil it, brother.

"Meet the Fentan Knights: Mazzy…"

A halfling woman, stern, attractive and not yet middle-aged; she has auburn hair, unsmiling eyes, golden armour of a clearly dwarven make, a bow on her back and a sword by her side. She is almost already that age when the decent halfling woman does nothing but smoke a pipe with her husband on the porch of their hut, watching over a crowd of their pea-sized, pea-brained children— Or, possibly, like Mitsu, whose thirst for danger did not quench in youth, either, she is a hard-hearted assassin; or, if not assassin, then a burglar, or thief.

Mazzy is neither: she neither wants children nor wants to keep close to the shadows and the ground; she would be a paladin, if she could; she could not find herself a halfling husband, and she had to satisfy herself with a human, her sister told his sister with bitter resentment intriguing in one who was kin to the heroine of Trademeet.

—If he reads Mazzy's mirthless eyes correctly, which he does, Mazzy's human is dead. This, if anything, makes her even more fascinating; for fascinating she is, every bit as fascinating as the tales about her. They measure each other for several heartbeats, and, though she barely reaches to his waist, hostile, suspicious and unfriendly, she withstands the full force of his intent, focused gaze. Not many humans are capable of that.

"Anchev," she says dryly; so, this is how Mazzy Fentan wants it— "Lady Fentan," he replies agreeably, avoiding the confrontation, for now.

"Nalia…"

Nalia, Imoen says, and he sees the original to his sister's facsimile: fine legs. Finer breasts. Carrot, braided hair, brown eyes, regular features, slight softness of the body which adds to all the right curves; a hooded azure-and-or wizard robe which accentuates them; tactful make-up, a signet ring and a very aristocratic scandal in her eyes as she catches his own, vulgarly wandering and vulgarly appreciating the view, and arcs a carefully tended eyebrow. The scandal promptly turns into intrigue when he bows his head lightly, smirking in unapologetic acknowledgment of his, again, temporary, defeat; and when she hears him speak as he says, "Nalia."

"Sarevok," Nalia replies, unsure, perhaps, of how to address him.

There is a story behind Nalia, too, and he is as intrigued as she is, though he hides it better. But Imoen moves on already, watching him with mixed curiosity and laughter; and, promptly, he understands why.

"Aerie…"

After Mazzy and Nalia— Aerie, for one thing, is an elf.

Aerie is small, fine-boned and delicate, shorter even than Imoen herself is, even when his sister is not wearing high-heeled boots to make herself almost three inches shorter than Nalia. Aerie is also, it is impossible not to notice, a blue-eyed blonde; and, from a certain point of view, that is enough. She, and Nalia, and Mazzy… A part of him is on the verge of sharing in his sister's hilarity. Why, with Kriemhild—

It does not do, however, to start a professional relationship with cheap advances; or, at least, he corrects smiling as he recalls certain incidents from his past, it does not do to do so unless cheap advances are expected— And Aerie, who in her loose, white and gold robe has a certain quiet god-given aura around herself, is, very obviously, painfully obviously, pregnant.

"H-hello," she says, blushing lightly, reminding him slightly of Anomen Delryn; Anomen Delryn in Aran Linvail's colouring.

"Hello, Aerie," he growls softly, and watches, amused, how Aerie's large eyes grow even larger. She looks ready to run, that very moment and her condition notwithstanding; and, at the same time, rooted by fear to her spot.

But, again, he is the newcomer and the client here, and Imoen is watching; and there is no challenge in terrifying little, pretty Aerie—now, Nalia and Mazzy; especially Mazzy— He thus takes his eyes off the blushing elf; and now, he knows where his malodorous clothes had come from; for Imoen concludes:

"…and Minsc."

And there is a hamster.


	31. V: Queenside Castling, 2

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**2**

"Sh-she is beautiful," the elf said. Then, she sighed. "Oh, to be able to fly again!"

Imoen frowned. "Again?"

They were sitting in the enchanted herbal garden, all three of them: Kriemhild, in her new, brown, linen dress, and she, and the elf, whose name was Aerie, and who had come that morning from the city to visit the druids. It was hot—there would be a storm later that day—and the herbs, barely grown as they were, were surrounded by a cloud of smells. There was parsley, and sage, and rosemary, and thyme; and many other herbs, the smell of some of which brought up a small smile to Imoen's face.

The elf and she would return to Trademeet together, and then, Imoen would learn what Aran Linvail's reply to her message would be. But the elf was pregnant, and the walk in the hot day had tired her. "I-I have an enchanted belt to help me," she had said, modestly, "but I do not like to use it unless I have to." That was why they were sitting, drinking the bitter herbal tea and talking as Imoen waited for Aerie to rest; and the conversation turned to Altair, who was perched nearby, with her head under her wing, asleep.

Imoen looked at Kriemhild, who was eyeing the elf with open distrust and jealousy; for a good reason, perhaps, because Aerie was everything Kriemhild was not: delicate, elven, and beautiful, with porcelain skin, large, blue eyes, and long, fair hair. It took just Aerie's presence in the room for Kriemhild to instantly become a half-beast again— Aerie was also, unfortunately, not a bad person, and it was hard not to like her. Even in spite of her childlike looks which just… begged men to take care of her.

Imoen, sipping her tea, smiled, thinking of what her brother's reaction to the elf would be. Either he would resolve that she is a weakling, unworthy of one glimmer of His Brilliance's golden eyes, she decided, or he would be the first to fall under the expectant mother's wide-eyed, innocent charm—

Or both. It, too, was possible. The mind was a miraculous thing this way; for now, though, it was Aerie—who, though large-eyed and rather terrified, had wavered only for the shortest moment before greeting Kriemhild exactly as she had greeted Imoen—Aerie who was marvelling over Sarevok's hunting bird.

"Yes," she was saying. "I— I had w-wings, once— M-my people belong to a race of w-winged elves called the avariel… But m-my wings had to be c-cut off when I w-was captured— I still m-miss them, s-sometimes… The f-feel of the w-wind in my feathers and in my hair… I— I'm sorry," she said, blushing and lowering her eyes. Kriemhild laughed, hoarsely, with malice in her hard black eyes; and, not for the first time, Imoen wondered how much her intelligent sister-in-law actually understood from what was being said. More than she was letting out, she suspected.

Aerie seemed genuinely hurt; she twitched lightly, casting a surprised look in the half-orc's direction. "Don't mind her, please," Imoen said, feeling the need to apologise. "She— I don't want to talk about this, because I don't think she would want me to, but please don't mind her. You know," she smiled, trying to smooth out the bad impression, "I think that my brother would understand you better than I do. He flies Altair— I mean. She's his familiar, so he feels what she feels when she's flying, sort of. And he's ridden a dragon."

It was perhaps only now, in this cosy, languid atmosphere of a mid-morning tea, that the full impact of what this meant struck her. He had ridden a dragon. Sarevok had actually… ridden a dragon. And survived to be scolded by her. She smiled, suddenly proud of her dragon-riding brother.

Aerie, meanwhile, was frowning. "He has?"

"Yes, he has," Imoen nodded. "We were fighting the dragon, and he jumped on his back—" She broke off, because, if Aerie's eyes were to be any indication, the elf was already very much impressed. "You f-fought a dragon?" she asked.

Imoen laughed. "Yes. Kriemhild was there, too—"

---

"And where is your brother now?" Aerie asked when the tale, carefully edited and thus full of laughs—even Kriemhild animated lightly during its telling, and, once, accepted the barley sweetmeats from the plate Aerie offered to her—was finished.

"He's—" Imoen stopped, suddenly at a loss of words; then, she looked at the sun and at the hour. "Actually, he should be in Trademeet by now," she said, in the end, "And I ought to be there, too. Can you walk now?"

Aerie nodded. "Yes. I-I think so."

"Good. Kriemhild, do you want to go with us to the city?" The half-orc's face was unreadable, and so, she tried again. "Kriemhild. Imoen—" pointing to herself, "—go—" several steps, "—Trademeet," pointing in the city's direction; finally, "Kriemhild?" Rising intonation; she remembered that Sarevok used it in orcish when he asked questions. "Go?" A brief walk again. "Stay?" A categorical halt. Her sister-in-law must be having a fine laugh at her expense now, she thought darkly.

If Kriemhild did, she gave no hint of it; instead, she scratched her head, and said, slowly, probing, "Shtay." Imoen silently thanked both Oghma and Ilmater for this small miracle.

Aerie, now afoot, was watching the pantomime with a lightly perplexed frown; "I'm sorry. But it is really up to her to decide how much of her story she'll want to have told, I think," Imoen said.

"I— I think I understand," Aerie said, with the kind of small smile which was rather genuine than polite. "We can go, I t-think. Bye, Kriemhild!"

The half-orc grunted something not too civil in response.

---

Kriemhild, at least, has the excuse of being a half-orc raised among orcs, Imoen thought furiously after she received Aran Linvail's message, which, in very polite, circumspect and uncertain terms, meant that Imoen had to break Sarevok out of prison by herself, if she absolutely insisted on doing it; if she did not, she was always welcome to take her brother's place by the Shadowmaster's side—and after she suffered the Lady Itona's reception. The woman enjoyed her small grudges so much that Imoen sincerely wondered how the Trademeet guild could function at all with such a mistress.

A small crowd gathered in the marketplace, near the sausage-inna-bun peddler she meant to carefully circle in a wide arc as she would search for something to eat.

"What's going on?" she asked a nearby gnome.

"Oh, it's jus'em philosophers, goin' at it again," she replied; Imoen sighed and, taking care not to lose her purse to some brother or sister in trade, elbowed her way through the commotion. Philosophical discussions in Trademeet could turn nasty. She still remembered the brawl incited by Parmenides' imprudent, unconsidered claim that 'anything exists, and nothingness does not exist'—Sarevok had been in a particularly amused mood afterwards—

"RRRAAAGH!" she heard suddenly. "Minsc and Boo will save the little man!"

Imoen halted, blinked, and— Dare I? she thought. Perhaps I dare.

The man inside the circle of onlookers was very, very tall—but my brother is taller, she thought smugly—bald, and dressed in rough skins and wool, and in tall boots with fur sticking out of them, which he must be far too warm in in this hot day. He was carrying on his back a large, heavy, two-handed sword—but Sarevok's was much sharper and better enchanted, she could bet—and a long bow and a quiver. He looked almost as much out of place in Trademeet as Kriemhild would; and he was charging—no: tripping a man who had attacked… Diogenes, by the looks of it. Imoen wondered what the old cynic had said this time, and to infuriate whom.

Now, the old, almost naked, long-bearded and rake-thin thinker was berating the man who had come to his defence, hitting him lightly on the shin with his cane. "…you tried to disprove my argument, you bad, bad man! Violence is never the solution to a conflict!"

His much better dressed opponent—Aristippus, perhaps: Diogenes and he were ancient enemies—pshaw-ed. "It appears I won the debate," he stated haughtily. "We're leaving, Huntley."

His bodyguard, still hissing, got himself up from the ground, and the pair left the scene; Diogenes took one last jab at his defender, and, casting suspicious looks at the winner's back, departed in the precisely opposite direction; the crowd, seeing that the show was over, also scattered. Only the unwitting hero of the performance remained on the ground, clearly confused by the lack of gratitude and the philosophical resolution of the incident.

Imoen saw him closer and up front then: he had tattoos on his face which looked like some tribal markings, and which corresponded well with his barbarian garb—but which also managed to look a lot as if some child had played with face paint and had painted his face while the man had been asleep… There was a wide purple ring over his right eye, his right temple and his right cheek; to her other eyes—

The man carefully cupped his palms by the opening of his bag; a moment later, he brought them close to his ear. "What says you, Boo?" he asked, in a voice which carried such a thick, heavy accent Imoen could barely understand it now that the sentence had not been bellowed out at top voice. "Ah."

Suddenly, the man—who must be the Minsc of the Minsc-and-Boo gig, then—turned to Imoen and, after displaying an impressive complement of white teeth in a wide smile, said, "Boo says that heroes are heroes, and do the butt-kicking, and the little men argue later that they must not. But without the butt-kicking, there would be no little men to argue. Ergo, Boo says, Minsc and Boo did the right thing." He frowned. "Though Minsc does not know what 'ergo' means."

The man was possessed, insane, or otherwise not in his right mind; Imoen, aware of her weapons, did not run away. "Er. Boo is right, I think," she said weakly.

Minsc smiled again. "He is. Boo is never wrong! Do you want to see him?"

"Er," Imoen said, in spite of her weapons backing off a step. "It's not necessary, really…"

However, Minsc already put out one giant palm, and bid her, invitingly, "Look!"

She did; and, to her relief, saw that it was only a hamster. Well, fine, she thought. He thinks that his hamster is speaking to him. And perhaps he's even right. I think I once talked to a chicken.

"Very… Er, nice," she said, politely; then, as the hamster was retrieved, she sighed; and then, smiling through her teeth—no one else remained, of course, now that the brawl was over—she said, "I must go, Minsc. It looks like it's about to rain. Which way are you going? Perhaps we'll go together part of the way?" Did no one really care that a heavily armed hamster-talking giant was on the loose in a place with children?

Suddenly, the wide smile disappeared: Minsc grew, in a way, as sad as Aerie had been that morning when Kriemhild had laughed at her. "Boo says," he said, "that the little girl is scared, and that she does not really want Minsc to go with her—"

Boo was, apparently, an amazingly perspicacious hamster. Even though the little girl in question was furious rather than scared.

"—so Minsc and Boo will go home now," the man finished, standing up from the ground, and Imoen immediately felt bad for feeling relief.

"It's been nice meeting you, in that case, Minsc," she lied. "And Boo really is right," she added, because that much, at least, was true. "You did do the right thing."

The man was not to be deceived by her belated politeness. "Minsc and Boo will go now," he repeated, sadly, and went away, leaving her feeling rather rotten.

She left, too, hoping that the man really had someone to take care of him; he appeared to mean no harm, but, with his sheer physical strength, he might harm someone without even meaning it— Then, again, someone had given him his sword and his bow; though whether this meant that Minsc could be trusted with them, or simply that his guardian was a very, very reckless person, was beyond her reckoning.

Hamsters! She shook her head; but she had not lied to Minsc about one thing: it was, indeed, about to rain. Fortunately, she was near Vyatri's pub and inn, the most expensive and her and her brother's favourite haunt in Trademeet; and, as she had just remembered, she was hungry.

She would not find peace in the cool, thick walls of the tavern, though; as soon as she was seated, and as soon as she ordered—pork chops and dumplings, with a side dish of vegetables and a glass of red wine, nothing special—someone approached her. She looked up: it was a carrot-haired young woman, about her own age, but taller than her, in a blue dress, and on it, an azure cloak which Imoen remembered contemplating buying herself; and, all in all, beyond the cloak's visage-deforming illusion, rather attractive. She also had a dagger and a purse which just might hide spell components.

"Excuse me," she said, "But I can't help wondering— Might I join you?"

"That depends," Imoen replied, smiling. "I don't think that you are an assassin, unless you are a very polite one. All the same, I must ask you to keep your hands where I can see them, after you take the cloak off. Also, if you're looking for company, I'm not in the mood right now. And, if you're not, this leaves the question what it is you're looking for."

Apparently, she managed to utterly scandalise the redhead; because, as she seated herself, carefully keeping her hands on top of the table, the woman asked, "Are you always this—this direct—or is it just with me?"

"Let's just say that you found me on a bad day," Imoen replied. "My brother is in prison," I have to figure out how to pull him out myself, because his boyfriend's threatening to kill him, "and I've just talked to a man with a hamster—"

The redhead frowned. "You talked to Minsc?"

Imoen started. "You know him? Doesn't matter, really— Who are you, and what do you want? Thank you for not killing me so far, by the way."

A frozen smile. "I'm feeling more like it every second. Aerie told me—"

"Oh, and so you know Aerie, too," Imoen interrupted, casually re-evaluating her interlocutor over the dish the waitress had just brought.

"Yes, I do," the woman replied curtly; then, to the waitress, "Only a glass of wine, thank you." She turned back to Imoen. "Aerie told me that you have a pair of horses. A golden, heavyset stallion called Grasshopper, and a rose grey jennet mare."

"Deneb," Imoen nodded over her dumplings. "Yes, I do. What of it?"

"How much would you want for the pair of them?"

Imoen started. "They are not for sale. Money's not an issue," she added, anticipating the next question. "Aerie might have mentioned to you that I raided a red dragon's lair recently… after killing its inhabitant," she added, in case the veiled threat was not clear enough.

The redhead sighed. "I really caught you on a bad day, didn't I? Can't I, at least, convince you to think about it?" she added when Imoen offered no reply; then, squeezing together her lips, evidently coming to some sort of important decision, "I— Please understand… If these are the horses I'm thinking of, they once belonged to my family. Grasshopper was my father's, and the mare—her name is Buffy, by the way—she was… she was mine. We lost them in very… very unhappy circumstances. I would really like to get them back. I can pay you more than a fair amount."

Imoen frowned, and did yet another, much slower and thorough re-evaluation of the taller woman, now playing with her wine glass nervously, clearly unwilling to drink from it. "I think," she said carefully, "that I have been told that Grasshopper and Deneb once belonged to some prince." Anomen even said a name, she remembered, though she did not remember the name. "D'Ar— d'An— d'Anise?" she hazarded.

The pretty redhead sighed again, this time utterly miserably. "D'Arnise. And not a prince. A duke. Beyond that, you are, essentially, correct."

"You don't look like a duchess," Imoen retorted by reflex.

The woman laughed. "How do you think a duchess should look like? But yes, you are right, again. That would be the 'dispossessed after her father's assassination' part, I'm afraid." Suddenly, she drank her wine; all of it in one go.

Imoen blinked. "I'm sorry," she said; to her own surprise, she found herself believing the woman's story.

What a day, she thought. First, a wingless winged elf, then a hamster-talking barbarian, and now, a dispossessed heiress… It's almost on par with yesterday. Perhaps I should start a ranking of the days of my life.

"Listen," she said, "d'Arnise—"

"Nalia," the redhead interrupted.

"Imoen," Imoen replied with a smile. "Listen, Nalia. The truth is that— Well. The truth is that Deneb and Grasshopper are not really mine. Or, well, Deneb may be, but Grasshopper is my brother's—"

"That would be the dragon-riding brother who is currently in prison?" Nalia interrupted, in an alarming display of good memory and faculty for logic.

"Yes, it would," Imoen replied levelly. "Grasshopper is his. And, actually, they are both probably neither his nor mine, but a friend's of my brother's—" who told me today that he would try to kill Sarevok, soon, because business was business— "So, I'm sorry. Even if I wanted to sell them both to you, I really couldn't."

She shrugged. "So. That's how it looks. It's not up to me. I'm sorry. You'd better go… Say hello to Minsc and Aerie from me."

---

Nalia d'Arnise left the tavern soon after. Imoen ate the rest of her dumplings, pork and vegetables, drank another glass of wine, and also set off, into a torrential rain. It didn't look like the downpour was going to stop anytime soon, and she'd better return to Kriemhild.

First, though, she turned towards the council building and took a quick peek through Pangur's eyes, telling the cat that under no circumstances should he tell Sarevok that she did so. Her brother was sound asleep; and if she did not know what his sleep must be like; which, now, she did—she would be happy for his moment's rest.

In any case, walking slowly in the heavy rain, looking through the eyes which were not her own, she did not notice the running halfling. They crashed into each other with an effect which would be comical, but for how painful it was to slide and hit the wet mosaic stones of the Trademeet street.

"Oomph," the halfling groaned; "I'm sorry, I really am," Imoen repeated, helping him up. "Hey! I know you!" she exclaimed, seeing the halfling's face. "You're the fiancé of Mazzy Fentan's sister!" She met the man, vaguely, when she had spoken to the sister herself.

"Pala's, yes," the distraught halfling replied. "Danno. Although fiancé may be too big a word after what I've done— Listen. I don't have much time. You wanted to meet Mazzy? She's at home. Unless… Could you help me? I have to go to the temple of Waukeen, it's—"

"—right behind the corner, I know," Imoen replied, rather surprised. "What happened?"

"I… Well, I had Pala drink a love potion," Danno said, ashamed, as they started for the temple in a hurried march. "It turns out that it may have been poisoned. Either by accident…"

"…or on purpose," Imoen finished, checking her weapons for the hundredth time that day.

"Yes," the halfling nodded. "Wallace says he bought the potions from a man at the temple. And the usual antidotes won't work."

The woman sighed, and followed. The day was moving up and up in the ranking of interest.

---

Barl, for that was the poisoner's name, was a worshipper of Talona, the poisoners' goddess; he had managed to insinuate himself into Waukeen's temple due to the weakness of Waukeen's clergy—

They managed to subdue him, in the end, the two other priests, Imoen and Danno; subdue him, and destroy the poison mists he called to his aid. But they found no antidote in the room they searched when he died to the venom he swallowed as they were subduing him; only the recipe for the extremely complex poison.

Apparently, Danno's love-struck foolery and Pala Fentan's idiosyncratic reaction to a test sample released by mistake saved the halfling population of Trademeet from extinction: Barl had meant to poison the wells. Still, there was no antidote.

"Can you two go and try to cure the poison? Or slow it down, at least?" Imoen asked the horrified, mortified priests; if Pala lived that long after ingesting the toxin, it might just be possible to cure her. "And Danno—can you go to the druid embassy, and ask Cut-Face to come here, and bring Adratha's book? He'll know what I mean. Take the horses when you return. There will be a lot of running around if we manage to figure out the antidote— Some of the things here look pretty rare…" she muttered to herself as she eyed the poison recipe; she was beginning to understand where Edwin's habit had come from. "Ooze mephit liver—"

When Cut-Face came and brought Adratha's book with him, Imoen was sitting by Barl's small, makeshift set of alembics, working out the antidotes to the poison components. She greeted the old druid's arrival with great relief: she knew the basics of the alchemical arts, and poisons, but had never intended to be a specialist. Cut-Face's knowledge of natural toxins would be helpful.

It took, in all, four hours to figure out the antidote components and the tentative way to combine them so that they would not neutralise each other; Danno was sent to spoil the merchants' well-earned rest, dinners and suppers, and force them to re-open their stalls and shops and sell him the necessary items—

There were two shadows on the floor, of two people standing in the entrance to Barl's cell and laboratory. Imoen looked up; and was not exactly surprised to see that it was Nalia d'Arnise, and the avariel Aerie.

It was— It was more like the last piece of a puzzle falling into its proper place: after all, how else but in an adventurers' party could a dispossessed heiress to a duchy have met a wingless winged elf and a half-wit barbarian with a hamster?

The two women understood that she did; Aerie smiled. "W-we sent Minsc with Danno. S-sorry for coming s-so late…"

"We didn't know what happened," Nalia added. "Pala's stable, but the priests say that to heal her, they must have the antidote."

Imoen nodded. "We're almost done figuring out the recipe, but we still have to prepare the stuff. There's plenty of work for you two."

---

Cut-Face took Minsc, half the antidote components, and set off for the druids' dwelling; they would double up the work this way, just to make sure that if something went wrong during the preparation in one place, the other team would carry on the work, and less time would be lost. Imoen told him to try and tell Kriemhild what was happening; she was feeling bad on her sister-in-law's account. She must really spend more time with the half-orc. But Aerie and Nalia were… were fun.

They were both almost useless in the laboratory: Nalia, who was a wizard, had no experience in the preparation of potions; Aerie, who had, was pregnant, and so, had to leave the small, stuffy room when it started to fill with the noxious fumes. But later…

…later, when the initial preparation of the components was finished, and the work was almost doing itself, and all that remained was to whisper, at times, an incantation to instantly cool down, or heat up, a concoction; or to stir a solution seven times every half an hour for two hours, now deasil, now widdershins; or to filter the precipitate from the supernatant after waiting one hundred and thirteen heartbeats, and add this to that, and separate this other thing from that other thing, and watch the small droplets gathering in the distillers, _ano kai kato_, _ano kai kato_,up and down, up and down…

…then, they talked; night came, and they talked, just so that Nalia and Imoen would not fall asleep—Aerie, reluctantly, made use of her enchanted belt to lent her strength not to have to step into her elven reverie. They talked: about magic; about swords, and staves; about dungeons, and dragons; about lost homes; about gained enemies. ("H-haegan," Aerie said, with utter distaste; "Roenall," Nalia, in the same tone; "Irenicus," Imoen said, just not to have to say, 'my family, and a lot of other people, too'— "T-the Shattered One?" Aerie asked, surprised. "Perhaps," Imoen replied, "I don't know.") About enemies; and friends; and lovers; and family; and gods. ("I still can't understand how she can pray to Aerdrie Faenya, Baervan Wildwanderer and Ilmater at the same time," Nalia said, shaking her head; Aerie giggled. "They all listen," she said, as if that explained anything.)

Much remained unsaid, and much of the talk was, very much on purpose, about lighter matters: for example, the latest news from and the latest fashion in Baldur's Gate, where Skie Silvershield and Aldeth Sashenstar-Silvershield, her husband the latest addition to the complement of the four Dukes and Duchesses, were the heart and soul of every gathering. "Skie Silvershield is pregnant," Nalia said. "H-half of the noble ladies in Baldur's Gate are," Aerie added. "Long-time visionaries, I guess," Imoen laughed. "But it's very easy to buy robes," Aerie finished, blushing, with one hand on her belly—

---

"Mmm?" Imoen asked, wiping the saliva and the blood from the corner of her mouth. She had slept a bit, and it had been a nightmare.

"I said that for an adventurer, you have a heavy sleep," a businesslike female voice answered. "The dagger is not necessary, by the way. Aerie let me in. I'm Mazzy Fentan."

Imoen started into a sit. The halfling had brown, sharp eyes, was dressed in chain mail, and reminded her, for some reason, of Jaheira. "You're Mazzy Fentan?"

"Yes," the older woman replied. "You've hurt yourself."

"It's nothing. It's psychosomatic, I mean."

The halfling laughed. "By their words, you shall know them— If I had had any doubt that you were a wizard, this would have dispelled them. Here," she added, putting one small, slim and warm hand on Imoen's cheek. "I may not be a paladin, but it has been given to me to lay hands on others… Done."

"Of course," she said, moving away and eyeing Imoen curiously, "that it's psychosomatic only begs for the question what kind of stress you are passing through…"

"I see," she said when Imoen offered no explanation. "We don't know each other long enough, do we?"

"No," Imoen replied. "No offence, Miss Fentan—"

"Call me Mazzy. You saved my sister's life, after all," the halfling said matter-of-factly.

Imoen looked around the small cell, finally remembering: it was about the seventh hour of the morning when the preparation of the antidote was complete—long past daybreak; the bustle of the city's traffic under the windows of the cell had almost returned to its usual intensity when she sent Nalia off to the Fentans' house with the mixture and, utterly exhausted, dropped into the bed and the sleep and the chase and the fighting and—

Sarevok.

She cursed, in a very un-ladylike manner, before she remembered Mazzy's presence in the room. The halfling was watching her calmly. "I take it that the offer is rejected?" she asked, and, for the first time, the traces of merry, halfling-like sparks showed up in her eyes.

Imoen laughed. "I'm sorry. It's just that I really do have a lot on my mind—"

"Yes," Mazzy said. "I suppose you do."

There was a note in her voice which made Imoen pause for a moment. "What do you mean?" she asked carefully at length.

"I met Raissa," Mazzy said offhandedly. "She told me about the pair of strangers who helped her and Tiris— Apparently, I am not the only one in our neighbourhood who owes much to you. I talked also with Danno, since Pala is still asleep, and he described you and the man who accompanied you. And Aerie told me about that strange aura of yours… And Nalia, this morning, brought the strangest tale from Vyatri's inn. Apparently, a paladin said—"

"Enough," Imoen said, resignedly. "I asked what you meant, Mazzy. That there won't be a place for me in your party?"

The halfling smiled, briefly. "No. Only that if you're afraid that your secret will be discovered…"

"…it already has," Imoen finished, still with mixed feelings: gratefulness combined with the wish that every second cleric could not tell that she had a strange aura around her.

"You should, perhaps, be more careful with what you let people know about yourself. We're departing tomorrow," Mazzy said, standing up from Imoen's hard, uncomfortable cot.

Imoen started. "Tomorrow?"

Mazzy nodded. "Yes. We would go today, but there is an auction scheduled for the evening. We cannot put that off, I'm afraid."

"But," Imoen started to say, "your sister…"

"Pala should be fine by the evening."

"But— I mean, when have you come here?"

"The night before yesterday," Mazzy replied calmly, and Imoen suddenly decided that this was a very meaningful calm; the kind of calm which advised her to drop the topic.

"I'm not going," she announced instead, swinging her legs to get off the cot.

The halfling closed the door she had been opening, and shook her head. "Yes. I thought that you would say that," she said, with a slight grimace of the mouth. "You really should be more careful with your information… Aerie and Nalia told me about your brother."

"Forgive me," Imoen replied. "I didn't know that loving my sibling is such a rare and deplorable thing that I should hide it."

Mazzy's expression very carefully did not change. "The crux lies, perhaps, in the sibling's identity?" she suggested, without a trace of merriness. "We have just come from Baldur's Gate—"

"I know that," Imoen snapped.

"He will have a just trial. That is more than he would ever let his victims have."

"I don't want a just trial. If it's just, they will kill him."

The diminutive woman sighed deeply. "Nalia said that you would say that. Aerie said that, if you said that, she would trust your judgment. Nalia agreed. Mercy over law, they said."

"And what did Minsc say?" Imoen asked, undecided whether to be curious or angry at the way her matters had been discussed behind her back.

"Minsc is against, because there is no righteous butt-kicking involved," Mazzy replied with a passing smile, before returning to her usual grim face as she added, "This, incidentally, takes us to the next point of order. Though you win the vote, I cannot let anyone die—"

Imoen blinked. "Wait. What are you talking about? In particular," she added, "if you think that I helped your sister so that you would help me free my brother, forget it. Forget it all. All of it. You owe me nothing."

Mazzy shook her head. "No," she replied equivocally, "I don't think so. But…"

"For your information, I think that one day, my brother can be a good man," Imoen said with sudden, cold fury.

A bitter grimace crossed Mazzy Fentan's face.

---

They all met in the druids' herbal garden for the discussion of the breakout plan; Imoen sought out Kriemhild and Minsc; in a way, equally curious about them both.

The half-orc, thankfully, did not appear any worse for the wear after the night she had spent alone. She was clean, having, very obviously, washed herself, and she was wearing different clothes than on the day before: a green and red shirt and pants— Her dark eyes were watching the gathering from her impassive face with more curiosity than fright, and rather more curiosity than contempt; she knew about a hundred words of the common tongue and a very rudimentary grammar—and was not afraid to use them; she said, "Hello, Imoen," when she saw Imoen, and, this time, when asked if she wanted to stay with the druids or go, she rumbled, "Go."

Imoen was, admittedly, impressed.

Minsc… Minsc was large, boisterous and, apparently, mostly harmless. "We met him near Nashkel," Nalia explained. "The way he tells it, he is Rashemi, and came to the Sword Coast with some witch of theirs. She died when they were attacked by gnolls, and he could not save her…"

"…b-because he was h-hit on the head," Aerie added. "They c-captured him and wanted to eat him. W-we saved him…"

"…but by this time, he already had Boo," Nalia smiled. "He projects his advanced cognition on Boo…"

"…but he has a good heart," Aerie finished. "H-he knows good from evil." A small smile. "He calls us his witches now."

Imoen decided that, for now, until she could form her own opinion about Minsc and his harmlessness, she would trust the two women.

She watched the large man as he was feeding his hamster grains under Altair's alert eyes; and suddenly, a plan, a crazy plan, a plan which just might work, occurred to her—

She looked at Nalia, now in her sorceress' cloak again. Hmm…

---

The auction would start in about an hour, and the interested citizens of the fair city of Trademeet were already beginning to gather in the building of the city council. Imoen would walk in with the biggest crowds; for now, dressed like a noble bore, she was spending her time idling in the marketplace, waiting for her opportunity.

There was a new tent standing where she had first met Minsc earlier that day; it was purple and blue, bright and cheerful, and outside it, a skinny, dark man was rattling a tambourine, advertising:

"Ten gold pieces! Ten gold pieces, and my wife, the illustrious Roma seer Kveroslava, finds lost loves and lost items, tells the truth of things and foretells the future! Do you want to know what man lies in your future, miss?" He flashed in Imoen's direction a smile of teeth as golden as the masses of his chains and jewellery; a smile as bright and cheerful as the tent, utterly impossible to resist.

She smiled back. "Not really. But I'll come in. Ten-gold-pieces' worth of insight for me, please."

The inside of the tent was dark, warm and stuffy, suffused with the familiar smell of frankincense; Imoen smiled. She could just imagine how happy her brother would be to change into fresh clothes and fresh scent after his stay in prison. And, especially, to change into fresh scent after changing into the clothes she was carrying with herself now.

There was a small, round table, covered with a white lace cloth; on it, a crystal ball, and cards—

"It is the Deck of Many Things," an accented female voice said. "You will meet it again one day, Daughter of Murder, and will play a game with it, a game whose outcome will echo loudly through the Planes… If you survive. Your path is difficult to predict… Impossible to see directly; there are only the ripples to trace, the fates of the others you affect…"

Imoen shuddered. In spite of being raised in Candlekeep, among Alaundo's prophecies—or, perhaps, because of it—_during the days of the Avatars, the Lord of Murder will spawn a score of mortal progeny…_—diviners gave her the creeps, as simple as that. It would be a good thing not to know one's future; not to know that the future was almost a set thing already.

She heard a deep, hearty laugh. "The one who ignores the past is condemned to repeat it," the seer's voice carried on, dimly. "The one who ignores the future, Daughter of Murder, is condemned to live it."

"In that case, I'd better learn how to play cards well, I suppose," Imoen retorted, and was greeted by another hearty laugh; and the seer Kveroslava showed herself at last.

She was fat and bronze, with black hair gathered in a bun, black, lively eyes and a black dress; and had a dreadful mass of jingling bracelets and a fine, healthy voice. "That was free advice," she said. "Not many puissant ones grace Kveroslava's humble tent. Now, what is your business, woman?"

"My brother—my brother by the name of Sarevok," Imoen said, remembering that she must have a great many other brothers, too, "He had a geas cast on him, by a thief called Aran Linvail. I need to know what this is about, and how to take it off. Here," she said, unclasping a golden necklace from her neck. "This once belonged to Linvail, and then, to Sarevok. Perhaps it will help you."

Kveroslava took the powerful amulet from her hands, and, closing her eyes, seemed to focus on it— However much of the stifling, heavy, mind-thickening atmosphere around Imoen aided the actual divination, and however much of it was simply catering to the public's expectations, there was no telling; but, soon, words flowed forth.

Imoen listened; heard the answers; recovered the necklace; thanked the seer; left the tent.

So, that was why— And he had not told her, and he had not seen it fit to tell her, and— I wonder how he got round it in Edwin's case, she thought, very disappointed; then, Perhaps he did not; perhaps that was why he left it to me to kill Edwin, in the end.

He must have been terrified, or amused, perhaps, by the conundrum—partly of his own making, after all: after all, he had told Aran to employ me; so, when Aran had the geas put on him, he could not ask him for my death without drawing even more attention to me than I was drawing to myself. And Aran might possibly decide, as he has decided now, to offer a Bhaalspawn and a thief his pet favourite's position, and remove from it an ambitious Bhaalspawn with a history of treachery and insanity—

—But he should have told me. Doesn't he trust me enough to understand?

Then another, less palatable thought: Would I understand?

Then another: Why should I?

A man accosted her. "It's gonna be a fine auction. The Fentan Knights found the butter knife of Balduran, they say! Sausage inna bun? One teeny gold coin, missus, and that's…"

"Cutting your own throat?" Imoen asked, and something in that prissy missus' calm eyes warned the peddler that, despite the cloth and the neighbourhood, the lass would not satisfy herself with adding, 'it's easy to arrange, you know;' instead, be arranged it would.

"Excuse me, missus, wrong person," he muttered; and backed off.

---

That same evening, on the isle of Brynnlaw, Joneleth Irenicus inspected the inmates of the former asylum. They all boasted rare, interesting powers—there was Aphril, who could see across the Planes, and Nadjer Skal, who could reach into them—

His eyes stopped. There. The shape-shifting girl had taken his face that day.

"Dili," he said. "Follow me."


	32. V: Queenside Castling, 3

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**3**

_**Sabishisa-ya**_

_**hana-no atari-no**_

_**asunarou**_

On the topic of loneliness: a cypress among flowers.

_**This is loneliness: Between the cherries in bloom, the tall, proud cypress.**_

Excellence breeds loneliness.

_**Pride breeds unhappiness.**_

The Rule of Threes: thrice-cursed, thrice-damned, thrice-tormented: with a murderer of a father, a wilful humanitarian of a sister, a bard of a bird.

_**Three-way is the falsehood of the liar's tongue: to the people, it speaks of false power. To the lover, it sings of false passion. To the sibling, it promises—**_

This has ceased to amuse me, Altair. Have you seen anything?

_**No, master. I have not.**_

Then keep looking. And fetch game for dinner.

---

Imnesvale in the Umar Hills is everything Imoen promised it would be: an insipid hole of nine wooden, thatched houses squatted roughly around a central square with a well in it, all of it under constant siege by the forces of the dark fir and elm forest. The path which led the party here, into this small clearing in the heart of this valley was, in places, so narrow that it was on the verge of disappearing completely.

There are meadows on the tops of the hills surrounding the vale, their guide told Mazzy and Altar confirmed to Sarevok; on the hilltops, on these pastures, at this time of the year all the herders and their herds should be. But they are not; instead, they are all here, the mooing and baaing crowd, and their assorted animals.

A meeting is taking place as they enter the gloomy village; torches and bonfires are lit everywhere, casting flickering shadows on the faces of the arguing people.

"—'fore the wolves have gobbled me flock entire!" a male voice whines.

"Aye, Mayor!" a female adds, "What be you and yours doin' t'solve this crisis, ey?"

The squat man leading the congregation coughs with the discomfort of weakness. "Calm down, people, calm down! Forsooth, you all know, I sent Delon for help to Trademeet—"

"And help has arrived," a halfling interrupts him boldly; having captured the mob's attention, she adds, "I am Mazzy Fentan, a valiant servant of good and righteousness. And these are my party. Delon found us on the way to the city."

Now, the boy runs towards the mayor and clinches to him like a leech to a supple body. "She is, Pop! She is. They tell stories about 'er an' all…"

The man liberates himself from his son's grip and looks around the assembled faces. "Aye, people! Ye 'eard 'im. Go back t'your houses. I must speak to the Lady Mazzy 'ere."

Nalia stirs as the grumbling crowd starts to dissolve, taking the halfling with it. "That would be our cue to scatter ourselves, too, I think," she says, too hesitantly for one used to being second in command. "Mazzy will go talk to the mayor. We should find a place to spend the night." She looks around the sorry excuse for a village with a distaste which might, perhaps, be rivalling his own, and sighs, "The people here must be really poor, to live in such squalor."

"'ere, miss, that be not polite much!" a squeaky voice pipes in. "This is my home!"

The redhead, unattractively, blushes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend."

"It's all right," the gangly, pimply boy who accosted them says. "Name's Willet. Jeb's son, Daar's brother and this here Vince's stable boy."

"Vincenzo's, boy," the heavyset man who has followed the boy corrects; judging from the thick gold, ruby-set chain on his neck, he is the village's richest citizen. "You may have use of my stables, and the Lady Mazzy will stay with me, of course. The rest of you—"

"'ere, lemme take 'em," the boy offers. "Ye'll be 'avin' Jacobs' house," he turns to the party, "The Widow Jacobs be ano'er one of 'em the ogres caught. Like me Mom."

Sarevok frowns: at last, some hint regarding Imnesvale's problems. "Ogres?" Aerie asks, meanwhile, looking at Kriemhild; but her voice is drowned by Vincenzo's as the corpulent man grows purple and roars out, instantly forgetting his prim-and-proper accent, "Ogres, boy? Cease yer yappin'! Not the ogres: the Witch, I be tellin' you, Umar 'erself!"

The barbarian stirs. "What is that that Minsc hears? An evil witch?! Witches are not evil, Boo says!"

"And Boo is right, my good man!" a third villager's voice bellows almost on par with Minsc's as the man joins the previous two. "The Witch's naught but Vince's prattlin'! The culprit's neither no Umar nor any ogre, but 'e wolves! Nelleck," the man drops in passing, hardly quieter, "Vince's good-for-nothing brother."

Sarevok exchanges a privately exasperated look with Imoen to decide which one of them should step in; fortunately, Nalia finally remembers her apparent function as Mazzy's lieutenant. "Yes," she says, a bit too loudly, over the incipient masculine squabble, "Can you show us to that house? Please?"

---

Seven families inhabit the nine houses; the eighth building is a trading post. The ninth stands empty, and that used to be the Widow Jacobs' hut.

It is small, dark and cramped, and both the Rashemi and he have to bend in half under the low ceiling.

"I— I don't feel well here," Aerie sighs as the six of them file into the hut, crowding it completely. "I-I will sleep outside, I think."

"Then Minsc and Boo will sleep outside, too," Minsc states; and then, more affirms than states, "Minsc will not let the ogres capture his witch. And Boo says that this place will give Minsc a pain in the neck," he adds, thoughtfully.

A feminine half-orc voice adds, slowly, "I sleep out." Kriemhild has finally let Imoen convince her to use the personal pronoun which does not exist in the female orcish. "Here—" she stutters, clearly at a loss of words.

"_Enra?"_ he growls at her in her previous tongue. "What?"

"This one wishes to excuse, husband, but how does one say 'home-inside-mountain'?" she asks, nervously, in the selfsame one.

"Cave," he says in human, because this is the only approximation he can find. "It reminds her of her home cave. I will also stay outside," he adds, amused, completely aware that whatever scared off the village simpletons cannot possibly be more dangerous than he is; and that this place is, indeed, a pain in the neck.

"But we can't all leave!" Nalia protests, eyeing the gathered faces, and, for some reason, him in particular, with outrage. "It will look wrong! They prepared it especially for us."

Imoen grins. "But you're staying in, Nalia." Then, seeing Nalia's drooping face, she adds, sighing, "All right. So am I." Then, she perks up. "Actually, it'll be great! I'll—"

---

_**Threefold is the weakness.**_

Clever. I admit. The sword, the sibling, the servant.

_**Thank you, master. Have you found a thing?**_

No. I have not.

_**There is a way. There always is a way. It is in the nature of the Planes. An exception, always; with this one exception.**_

Sitting with his wife, his sister, and his sister's cat, behind the Widow Jacobs' cottage, on the small meadow where they prepared the temporary lodgings; listening to Imoen talk with Kriemhild and Minsc and supplying, absent-mindedly, ever so often a word or another when communication fails utterly—he is reading in the night, in the yellow, warm, flickering light of the fire and the brightly burning torches.

Willet and Delon took the party for a walk around the village once they were settled. The visits started from Willet's father, Jeb. Lilah, Jeb's wife and Willet's mother, was kidnapped, but the men could not tell anything about how that happened. She was picking herbs; she disappeared.

Willet also has an elder brother, Daar; wiggling his eyebrows in a way presumably intended to improve the chat's mirthless mood, Willet said, "Daar 'ere 'as the hots for Colette. The Cowlie's lass, Colette is."

"There is a Cowled Wizard here?" Nalia asked; "Aye. Name's Jermien," Willet replied; and now, Nalia has gone to meet the Cowled Wizard.

Then, they met the Hendricks, Enna and Erlick, with a flock of chickens; the Shepherds, Groos and Dale and Dale's wife Margie and Kaatje and Atta; a family in mourning, because both Groos' wife and son were gone, and on the verge of breakdown, because neither Dale's wife nor either of his children was.

From these, only Kaatje supplied any new information. "I saw somethin' weird near Merella's hut," she said in the mouse-like squeak of a seven-year-old girl who is faced with the intent interest of six utter strangers, and a cat. "When I was 'ere with the sheep. Only it was invisible."

Her mother laughed nervously. "Girl 'as imagination, she does," she said. "Seein' invisible things! What else will she come up with, ey?!"

"How did you see it?" Imoen asked, ignoring the woman.

"I saw the shadow movin'," the girl replied. She was rather enraged that no one believed her, and refused to say anything else.

Her testimony was corroborated by that of the local drunk's, Travor's, now squatting with Vincenzo and Nelleck. "Aye," he said, "Shadows. Movin' shadows wi'out bodies. Comin' closer t'the village at night… 'at is why Vince lets me now stay with him."

"What'e'er he 'inks he sees, it is not important," Vince said over the plum vodka they all drank to toast to the success of the endeavour and eternal friendship. "Wouldn' wan' the Witch to get 'im."

"Boo wants to know who Merella is," Minsc said when they entered the next hut, and met Johanna, Ander, and their three sons whose only sister has vanished without a trace; and Sarevok, for a moment, considered the man closer, because he had just come to the same conclusion: the Mayor's wife was called Mistress Eina, and the last house remaining was the trading post. Who was Merella, then?

"Merella is a ranger… a protector of this forest," Ander replied.

"Or was," Johanna added glumly. "If the wolves got 'er…"

"Or that stranger," Ander finished. "We never learnt what 'e was about, now did we?"

"What stranger?" Imoen asked, frowning and expressing the sentiments of the entire company.

"Oh, he came an' gone, some four days ago, 'bout, askin' for 'er" Ander shrugged. "After the business started. Tall an' dark, an' weird 'imself. Didn' talk much. Didn' wanna go take care o' the orcs, either—" Kriemhild, thankfully, was hidden in the shadows of the party.

They learnt nothing new; and they lost Aerie in the trading post, to a fellow elf, by the name of Elence Fielding; a gnome, Min Minling, from a nearby village of the Understone; and a human from the south, Beherant Diir.

---

Imoen is now brown-haired, because she washed off the carrot hair dye, but had not found the pink one in Trademeet. She laughs in the background, smacking Pangur slightly on the nose to keep the cat away from the Rashemi's rodent. The Jittery Bit, as Altair called the hamster in a sudden, disgraceful influx of prosaic predatory frustration after Sarevok forbid her touch Boo, is scurrying around nervously. Kriemhild says something; her accent is improving.

He turns a page.

_Ulraunt's reading: During the days of the Avatars, the Lord of Murder will spawn a score of mortal progeny. These offspring will be aligned good and evil, but chaos will flow through them all. When the Beast's bastard children come of age, they will bring havoc to the lands of the Sword Coast. One of these children must rise above the rest and claim their father's legacy. This inheritor will shape the history of the Sword Coast for centuries to come._

_Tethtoril's reading: The spawn of the Lord of Murder are fated to come into their inheritance through bloodshed and misery. It is the hope of their father that only one shall remain alive to inherit his legacy. I foresee that the children of Bhaal shall kill each other in a bloody massacre._

Another page.

_Canto I, variations: _

_The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos will be sown from their passage. So sayeth the wise Alaundo._

_The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his wake he shall leave a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps. So sayeth the wise Alaundo._

_The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his death he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps. So sayeth the wise Alaundo._

Another page.

_The rivers of the Sword Coast shall run with blood._

He closes the dog-eared diary; it is useless to him. He has read it many times since retrieving it from Mae'Var's guild; and had known every word of it by heart before. There is always one child, whatever the phrasing or the reading of the prophecy. One child must rise to claim the legacy. One shall remain alive. One.

He intends to be that one; he wonders vaguely why the father should hope that the child remains alive; this is not what he is trying to discover now.

Imoen looks at him, and smiles. Sarevok smirks back, and opens at random the second leather-bound set of parchments, those he once considered less important.

_As the Beast's spawn gather in Saradush, the end is nigh._

Where did this come from?

He stares at the single verse for a moment, until he remembers: several years ago, back in Sembia, just before they left it for Baldur's Gate, Rieltar and Winski and Tamoko and he; he already had the armour and the sword. A dark cellar, not unlike Irenicus' cellars; but he was young yet, and, in spite of his entire training, not nearly as inventive as the one who had been an elf. There were no likes of mist horrors to make the priestess fear in spite of her fearlessness, no charms to make her speak in spite of her intent to remain silent; the cruelty was very physical. And very unsophisticated.

It was because of a near-catastrophe which followed the next one of those sessions that he learnt that information gained through torture was, half of the time, useless; and even later, when he met Semaj, Semaj the artist, Semaj who had once been a Zhent, and who had studied under a turncoat drow, and who would, in the end, be flayed alive— Even then, he distrusted the last words of dying men and women.

But this… This is interesting. Saradush.

"What, brother?"

Imoen sidles up to him, and he realises that he committed the gross, and inexplicable, indiscretion of speaking out his thoughts. "Saradush, sister," he repeats. "It is a city, in Tethyr. My foster father once bought himself a Tethyrian title, to lend himself prestige. Saradush is the first city of that county."

Imoen frowns. "And why remember that, now? Pining for the lost title? Count Anchev— It sounds absolutely terrible, you know," she laughs. "Almost as bad as Duke."

He stretches on the ground, letting her and her cat pounce on him like two leaping lynxes, and admits, laughing, "Yes, I do."

---

_**Hare.**_

It is still sunset over the hills, though it is night already in the valley.

Altair hovers, high on the sky; spots the prey; plunges in one massive swoop, one mad, killing rush of air around her and blood inside her and the terrible exertion of muscles and the sheer exhilaration of mind, the sheer exhilaration of death and kill and murder pumping through her veins. He loves her.

But she doesn't catch the unwise hare. It hears her, and it starts to run, and it runs for the safety of its burrow, but its burrow is on the edge of the elm and fir forest, and there is a shadow encroaching upon the red, sunset-lit hilltop meadows from the forest, and there are shadows in the shadow; moving shadows. A pack of wolves lent shape of pure shadow.

Halt, Altair! he yells at the golden eagle, now a golden arrow who loves the hunt and the chase and the challenge and wants to catch the hare before the wolves do; the wolves are standing on the border of the shadow and the light, panting, woofing, snarling, waiting; the hare, mad from the fear of the eagle, runs straight at them. Altair! I command you!

The eagle halts, just several steps behind the hare, just several steps in front of the wolves' fangs; she cries woefully and, with two flaps of her powerful wings, rises back into the security of heights as below, on the ground, the wolves of shadow catch her prey and rip it into pieces.

Soon, they disappear in the forest, and there are only traces of their feast: shreds of grey fur and red blood droplets on the ground.

The shadows encroach on the hilltops.

Return to me, Altair, he commands, not amused. Now.

---

"I have to go buy some food," he announces, lifting Imoen's cat from his chest. Imoen lifts her head and shakes it groggily; she must have fallen asleep. "Wha'?" she asks, wiping a trickle of bloodless saliva.

"Sleep, little sister," he orders; in the background, a barbarian is still playing with a hamster. His wife, left to her own devices, is watching Minsc wordlessly, with an occasional spark of mild interest in her black eyes as she follows the rodent.

"Kriemhild," he asks her as he leaves Imoen and stands up, "Do you want to come with me?"

She does not understand the question, and even less from him; and so, he repeats, in the orc tongue, "Attend me."

As they do, and he finds out that with him, when they are alone, Kriemhild will only speak orc, as an orc wife to an orc husband—he watches her; Imoen did wonders with her, but the fundamental truth remains unaltered. His wife repulses him, and, he suspects, the average man, as a woman. He likes her; she killed for him, after all; but the thought that this here should be a female adult—

He snorts. Once, in his childhood, he had been a whore—though by the end rarely whoring, and instead robbing, and killing, his rich customers; that was how he became a thug in Rieltar's service, after all, after the man decided that a golden-eyed prepubescent capable of overpowering a fit, trained adult man was a body worth fostering. But a whore he had been; and it is an easy truth that, however repulsive he, or anyone, might find Kriemhild free, with enough money he would have accepted her then, as someone would accept her now; she is bound to find her pleasure, one way or another, once they leave each other's presence and she understands that she is free to seek it—

Imoen should have left her with the druids.

"_Arrth,"_ he tells the half-orc as she finishes the tale of how she evaded the attempt to separate her from his side, "Good;" and she blushes, timidly and hideously.

"S-sir?" he hears as he crosses the muddy yard around the well. "C-can I have a moment of y-your time?"

It is Johanna's and Ander's eldest, with his younger brothers in tow. "Yes?" he barks at them, "What is it?"

They back off when they see his face, and, with a curt nod, he returns to his previous path; in the corner of his eye, he can see the boys nudging each other as they follow him. "'e's 'ere to 'elp us," the youngest one whispers to the eldest.

"S-sir," the eldest boy starts again, and Sarevok looks at him again; at which point, the boy's nerves give up. He yells, "I can't do it! Run!" and the boys are, indeed, off to a running start.

This definitely improves Sarevok's humour. "Kriemhild," he growls lightly at his wife. "Don't kill," he warns in orcish as, before them, the three Andersons' escape attempt is cut in the bud by a massive, screeching and crying bird emerging from the shadows just before their faces.

The youngest slid in the mud from the excitement of the run, and now looks with sheer terror at Kriemhild's bared teeth and the bone club in her hands; if only she were wearing her bone-laced armour now, he would have probably— No; even without the armour, the smell of urine is, suddenly, strong in the air. The other boys huddle next to their brother, cornered on one side by Altair, and on the other side by Sarevok himself.

"Now," the man says, with folded arms, watching the torch-lit tableau with unhidden amusement, "Can you tell me why you saw it fit to waste my time?"

"Er," the eldest Anderson replies unintelligibly, and, suddenly, Sarevok decides to give the boys a memory they will never forget; indeed, they will tell their children about. One move, and the Edge of Chaos is in his hand; one more, and the wide-eyed boy is in the other one, dangling over the ground held by the front of his shirt. "Well?"

"'ere, mister, we jus' wanna 'elp!" the middle brother yells out, seeing the danger threatening his elder brother. That one nods fervently as the youngest cries, "Yea! Jus' give us swords an'—"

Sarevok drops the eldest fool down on the ground, unkindly, sheathes the Edge of Chaos, and calls Altair to his hand; Kriemhild also relaxes and hides her club. "Jus' give you swords," he growls softly, not looking at the boys, but at his eagle, who now rubs her head against his palm; but, nonetheless, mimicking the peasant's accent. "It took more than ten years of my life to learn how to use one properly," he adds. "And I started younger than you." And unlike you, am a born killer, he might add further; but does not.

Instead, he says, "Come here tomorrow at dawn—or whatever passes for dawn in this hollow," he corrects himself, letting the boys see his utter distaste for their home. "Fetch your friends and parents, if they would come. And some heavy sticks. My wife and I shall teach you."

---

"What do you mean, you will not sell me these chickens?!" he thunders now at the old man, Erlin Hendrick, who backs off a step, over the threshold, back into his hut.

His good mood has, by now, completely vanished. "I," he adds, "will pay you well. As soon as we solve this quibble and leave, you will be able to go and buy however many chickens you want from the next village, old man. But I must have raw meat to feed my bird, and she cannot hunt at night."

"These chickens ain't for sale," the stubborn old fool repeats.

"Not for a thousand gold?" Sarevok asks sardonically, and finally sees the man's face alter. "I mus' speak t'my wife," Erlin Hendrick mutters, and withdraws into the hut.

"Wh-what is happening?" a girlish voice interrupts his thoughts: if he kills Erlin and Enna, he should hide their bodies to put down their deaths to whatever is plaguing Imnesvale— Kriemhild is looking at Aerie with dislike almost equal to Altair's sympathy.

_**A bird with clipped wings.**_

Sarevok frowns, because he does not understand what Altair means through this particular riddle; but he does not reply, neither to Altair not to Aerie, because Erlin Hendrick returns.

"'ere, mister," he says. "Ye be kiddin' me not? A thousan' gold?"

"Yes," Sarevok replies, suddenly amused; the deal is as good as made already, and he laughs at what Rieltar's face would now be if the man had been resurrected just to witness it. The chickens are ten, each worth less than a gold-piece; it is not a good attitude to business to squander one's resources so.

Why is he remembering Rieltar again?

"Hells and damnation," he adds for good measure, slipping into a merchant's accent, just to see if he still remembers it, "I'll even pay you in small change, gold and silver, old man; there can't be many gem traders here—"

At that, Erlin Hendrick pales, wavers and asks, with dry lips and in a dry whisper, "Wh-what do you know, foreigner?"

Sarevok scowls, and replies without answering, and in his own voice again, "Much. Not all. The chickens?"

The old man sighs, eyes him, Kriemhild, Aerie and Altair, and says, "Ye'd better come wi' me inside, ye do."

---

There is a gem hidden in one of the chickens, Erlin Hendrick says as they all sit around the table inside his fire-lit hut, and his pale wife is clutching his hand and looking at him intently and with pursed lips. The daughter of the Hendricks had been an adventurer in life, and her friends sent her parents the stone when she died; it is their last memento of her, and they hid it to protect it from thieves. Whatever thieves might find their way to Imnesvale.

"An' we have no way t'sell it, t'give 'er a right burial," Erlin finishes his sob story; Aerie is moved by it. "W-we w-will help you," she declares, looking with her big, blue, determined eyes to Sarevok and Kriemhild for support, and finding none.

Sarevok watches the old man, who cowers under his gaze, and, having waited long enough, says, "Gut the chicken, old man. We will see the gem."

_**Thank you, master.**_

Outside the hut, Altair, for a short while, eyes the chicken's entrails as carefully as a haruspex would, before embarking on the spread; inside the hut, he is watching the jewel. Small, oval, polished, and a rich golden colour, it sparkles in harmony with the fire and the light of his eyes. It is a cabochon, and the parallel orange spangles in the colourless matrix betray its identity to him at once: sunstone trash.

"A thousand gold, as agreed, not one piece more," Sarevok says carefully, and the old man, full of apprehension at how his treasure would be accepted by this forceful stranger, straightens proudly. "I can pay you three hundred in gold now, Hendrick, and the rest in gems; or three hundred now, and the rest tomorrow."

It is easy to squander other people's money, boy, Rieltar's ghost admonishes through the years, and Sarevok cheerfully recalls the man's bulging eyes after one of Sarevok's doppelgangers garrotted his foster father.

The deal is concluded shortly; the nine remaining birds would be delivered tomorrow, in return for the rest of the sum— "We will 'ave somethin' to put up a decen' grave stone for 'er," Erlin mutters with tear-filled, ancient eyes which, he is still not aware, sicken his guest. "Do you want 'em plucked, sir?" Enna Hendrick finally speaks out, salvaging the dignity of the situation, as the elf, the half-orc and the half-human are leaving the hut. "No. I want them alive as long as possible. The pernickety bird will not touch carrion," Sarevok replies, after a moment's consideration, absently juggling the sunstone feldspar between his fingers. Kriemhild follows the play of torchlight on it with interest.

"It was a good th-thing you did there, Sarevok," the pretty elven blonde on his other arm says thoughtfully as soon as the door has closed behind them. "The stone, i-it's worthless, is it not?"

"Yes, it is," he replies curtly, hiding his property. Aerie, from his vantage point, is a bit of fluffy, feather-like golden hair between two pointed ear-tips. "You are an Ilmatari, elf, are you not? I heard your prayer for tears when we travelled to this hole."

"Yes," the pretty, pregnant Aerie frowns, unsuspecting, "I pray to the Broken God, at times."

"Then tell me, elf," he asks amiably, "Is that why you wish to bring up your child as a fatherless bastard? To prove your perseverance to your god at your spawn's cost?"

Aerie is now confused. "N-no—" she stutters; but already, keeping in mind both his fathers, he lies reasonably, cruelly, probing, trying to solve Altair's riddle, "A child needs both parents, wingless bird."

And, at that, suddenly, Aerie's large eyes fill with tears, and her lower lip starts to tremble, and, overall, she begins to look not unlike a wet—yes, a wet wingless bird, a wet chicken; but before she stutters out anything, Mazzy and Nalia run into them; or, rather, they run into Nalia and Mazzy, who are quarrelling.

"I don't see why, Mazzy!" Nalia is whispering furiously. "Why should you know that I went to see him?"

Mazzy does not reply; instead, she looks up, and up, and up, and says, with disgust bordering on hatred, "Anchev."

It is the second word the halfling directed at him since they met, he thinks, amused.

---

_**Master?**_

Go to the cat, if you wish, he tells his eagle as Nalia approaches him around the fire.

"Can we talk for a moment? Alone?"

The voice is slightly hesitant; the entreaty, he expected.

"I believe we can," he replies lazily. "In the hut?"

The party are now sitting all together around a fire, eating, as, not few steps from them, loom the forest and its shadows. Mazzy learnt a lot during her long conference with the mayor. Tomorrow, they will set off to find the wolves and the ogres, and to Merella's hut. Mazzy knows about the stranger, too, though little more than they do: his name was Valygar, and he told Minister Lloyd, the mayor, that he used to be Merella's friend.

They are watched as they leave the circle of people around the fire; by Mazzy, suspiciously; by Kriemhild, too, though she hides it better; by Aerie, in a confused and, perhaps, slightly betrayed manner; by Imoen, with an expression frozen midway between laughter, admiration and reproach. Only Minsc and Boo calmly continue the conversation.

"Well?" he asks when Nalia and he are alone, in the darkness of the hut, lit only by the summoned lights; and, suddenly, the redhead loses half of her confidence; she has second thoughts about the tête-à-tête.

"You made Aerie cry," she starts, sitting down, looking up at him.

"Yes, I did," he agrees easily, folding his arms.

"Why?"

An odd question. "I felt like it."

Nalia casts at him a fierce, furious look. "You felt like hurting my friend? Your sister's friend? Just like that?"

"No. However, nor do I see a reason to justify my actions to you, my lady Duchess d'Arnise."

Nalia freezes. "Imoen told you," she says at length, slowly.

For a moment, he wonders whether not to ask Imoen for the solution to Altair's riddle, before rejecting the option completely; then, he shrugs. "She did not need to. You carry your mark on your palm and in your modes, duchess. You hide refinement, instead of aspiring to it. You are no petty thief who stumbled upon a prize and decided to make her life out of pretence."

"No," Nalia agrees, though she clutches her signet ring, unconsciously, as if she wanted to take it off, and could not. "You hide yourself well, too," she adds, with mock nonchalance. "Who are you, really? I watched you. You pose as a high-born turned an outlaw, and you have your role almost down pat—"

He smiles. "Careful, my lady Duchess. You are slipping into the vernacular. This foul habit may prove a hindrance when you return to the society. And you are planning to return to it, are you not?"

"You did not answer my question," Nalia says.

"I am a god's bastard. As is my sister. Where this places us during seating arrangements presents, I must admit, a fairly intriguing problem of protocol— But you already knew that, duchess," he finishes. "You did not answer mine."

"You already know the answer," Nalia says; and, for a moment, it almost looks as if they would discuss their business like civilised people. But Nalia halts again.

"You want my help," he therefore says brusquely, bored, cutting through the boil. "You fled when some scheme of your family's brought persecution on your head, and met Mazzy— How long ago? A year?"

It should be a year. "A year and a half," Nalia mutters.

He nods. "Since that time, you have learnt all you wanted on the road—magic, certainly, and, possibly, a measure of self-sufficiency. You collected a small fortune; not half your yearly income in the usual circumstances; but enough. And now, you want to take back your life; by force, if necessary. You may have heard that the Cowled Wizards have been in disarray since the massacre of their principals not a month ago, and you may be planning to become one of them to strengthen your position—"

His lazy, haphazard guess is correct; Nalia is now looking at him with eyes wide with pure shock, and so, he finishes calmly, "Nonetheless, your chief goal is to recover your duchy. For that, troops will not suffice; you need backing. And you do not know who rules Athkatla now." Imoen must have slipped out something, after all, he thinks. One does not usually seek political influence from an outlaw.

Suddenly, Nalia hisses out, "I want that slime Isaea to die."

Then, rather shocked, she covers her mouth; and he must re-evaluate her and consider what grievous error in judgment he committed in assessing her character. It is not advice, but assassination my lady Duchess d'Arnise desires.

An Isaea, Isaea Roenall, is well known to Aran Linvail; they have concluded many a satisfying transaction even during Sarevok's short stay with the Shadowmaster. Nalia's epithet describes him, given her perspective, rather adequately. It may be he.

"He killed my father, because we, Father and I, wanted to cut his engagement with me," she adds, hurriedly, as though he cared a fraction of what she does for her scruples or motives. "And now, he rules my land and my people in my stead. What must he be doing to them?" She shakes her head. "He never cared about the people. That was why—"

She stops, and says instead, "You are right. I want your help, although," pursed lips, "I wasn't planning to talk about it just yet." A lowered head. "There are some people who might help me… Father's old friends. They may provide patronage… Support my claim to the land. But I'd rather do all that with the Hold under my control. I thought that Mazzy would help, but—" A desperate shrug. 

He stores in mind the precious nugget of confirmation of Nalia's estrangement from the halfling, and probes, "You require mercenaries."

"Mercenaries, a commander…" Another shrug. "I'm not sure myself what I need, and that is the worst thing. Someone with experience," she admits candidly; and then, looks at him, slightly unsurely, "I will pay you, of course."

He wonders if that carrot-haired noble is even aware into what a prime target for blackmail she is making herself; and then, whether she will ever come into her own, or if she ends up another's—his, perhaps—pawn— For now, mildly interested, he considers the matter. "Do you know anything about the forces stationed in your hold?"

She looks up at him, confused. "I think I gave you the wrong idea," she says, laughing nervously. "Isaea let the Hold be overrun by yuan-ti. He does not visit it at all. He rules from his city estate, where he keeps my aunt hostage, in case I return, I suppose… He managed to rescue her from the snakes, very daringly and heroically, and at almost the last moment, I think," she adds with the heaviest sarcasm he has ever heard from anyone who is not Aran or Imoen. "I don't know for sure, though. I wasn't in Amn when that happened."

At that, he must laugh. "In short, my lady Duchess, you want military action not half a day's travel from your capital, coupled with the assassination of the vice-commander of the Athkatlan city guard, and the abduction of said vice-commander's unresisting guest. And, in return for this, you are willing to grant asylum to a dangerous criminal and an outlaw. Is that correct?"

Nalia blinks several times, in the quick succession of shock, before saying, with only slight surprise, "Yes. Actually, this is it. This is precisely what I want. Also, the horses," she adds, in a glorious non sequitur, "Grasshopper and Buffy… Deneb," she explains when he frowns.

"No," he refuses calmly. "The horses are my sister's and mine. The rest," he lets her wait a beat, "can be arranged."

Nalia beams. "Yes!" she lets out a small cry of happiness; then, recovering ducal mien, political shrewdness and, in part, his respect, she corrects herself, almost instantly, "Yes. That is good. That is very, very good."

He watches her with amusement. "I will consider the issue in detail during our stay here," he offers, unfolding his arms and moving slightly; his muscles long for rest, because, as the party travelled to Imnesvale, he walked a large part of the eight hours' walk. He has almost recovered his previous stamina, twenty days after five months of incarceration; Imoen was also satisfied with her performance— There is the question whether Nalia told the little sister about her plans; and, if not, whether he should, or if he should leave this for her to find out on her own: a small revenge for leaving him in the dark about his travel companions.

"Yes," Nalia is agreeing, meanwhile; and then, as though she guessed his thoughts, she adds, "But can I ask you something? Leave Aerie in peace. She has been hurt a lot… It's a wonder she holds as well as she does."

The Lady Duchess d'Arnise is trying to be firm and polite at the same time, and is failing at both, especially when she misreads his reaction to the request, and adds, "I saw the looks you were giving her. The same as you were giving me," she finishes resentfully.

"And the same as you were giving me, my lady Duchess," he points out, halting half-way; even so, Nalia is quite scandalised, equally by her own vulgar comportment and his vulgar open mention of it. She wavers in her reply; he adds, languidly, "I am a married man, Nalia."

The redhead shoots him a mordant look; and so, lightly, he moves on, straight to the finish. "I left a man in Athkatla, and a boy in Trademeet—though, I believe, Imoen left more of an impression on that one than I did… I also believe," he finishes lightly, "that I am currently recovering from a love. But my sister is, to the best of my knowledge, free."

Now, Nalia is three-way torn: between making an extremely pointed comment, not acknowledging a suggestion with as much as a ladylike word, and quite berating herself for ever thinking that a vulgar forgery, an ersatz and a pretence, can ever substitute for the genuine article—

He leaves her no time to decide how she wants to treat him; as he crosses the threshold of the hut, he stops for a moment, and, without turning back, without much feeling, says, "Imoen could do with some gratuitous company. I do not believe she had much of it in her life. Not recently. I do not know—" He shrugs. "Just ask her."

---

He falls asleep, guarded from the shadows of the dark forest by his temporary company, unaware that in Athkatla, Anomen Delryn is leaving the headquarters of the Radiant Heart.


	33. V: Queenside Castling, 4

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**4**

The dream repeats.

He is alone, on the street of an indistinct city, Baldur's Gate, and Beregost, and Athkatla, and Trademeet; and those quondam Sembian cities, Ordulin and Saerloon and Selgaunt, where he had once survived—

He walks ahead; he leaves the city; he is in a forest. The forest, again, is the sum of all forests: it is the forest outside Trademeet. It is the forest outside Candlekeep. It is the dark forest outside Imnesvale. It is the Cloakwood, and the Wood of Sharp Teeth. It is the forest which is his earliest memory; the forest where his mother took him to kill him.

There is a temple in the forest, and this, again, is every single of the many temples he has visited in his life; or one of those he may yet visit, when the right time comes. The door opens, and there is a sibling: always one of those he killed; sometimes one of those he remembers. Sometimes it is the dwarf Imoen's sister Gorion's child; then, because he killed her in Baldur's Gate, that temple, his home, the dream-temple resembles.

They fight, and he loses. Each time, each night, night after night, he fights his Father, and each time, each night, night after night, he loses.

---

…At least Mazzy is talking to him. Even if she is currently—not yelling: speaking very pointedly—at him.

---

He awoke before dawn, to Minsc's and Boo's grinning faces.

"Take the rodent away, or I will sic my eagle on it, Rashemi," he warned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes and swiping his hand down to his chin, where his beard started to grow back; the fingers, as usual, turned out covered in blood after this procedure. His whole head thumped with the repeating, rhythmic, familiar pain; not for the first time recently, he thought that he should have at least had the good sense to get drunk before getting the hangover.

The barbarian, perhaps sensing his lack of heart in the threat, was undisturbed. "Boo and I heard that the little men want to learn heroing!" he said in a loud whisper which sounded like a roar, "I will help Imoen's brother! Minsc will lead, teach and inspire! Shall we go?"

Speaking of the little sister— To the left, Kriemhild, smelling of juniper and fir needles, dressed in armour, sitting arm's-length from his head, guarding him. Had she wanted to, she could have easily crushed his head while he had slept; only the orc wife's complete subservience to her husband had protected him. Suddenly, he must again rethink the issue of manumitting her. "Husband," she said, almost unafraid, in greeting.

To the right, the delicate smell of a white wild rose behind one pointed ear: Aerie emerged from the cold, grey mist of pre-dawn, standing in her wood-brown, hooded cloak like a little, precious porcelain figurine of a fairy tale shepherdess, leaning against a staff, with her other hand on her pregnant belly, with her eyes closed, a-pray. For a while, curious what the prayer was, he watched her lips. _Ilmater, give me a well of tears to atone for my sins—I shall not hide it; land is not fruitful without moisture, I am not holy while I remain without a tear—_

Imoen, nowhere in sight. He smirked: the headache melted away, slowly, as it was wont to, after sitting for a moment.

"Aerie," he said, fairly satisfied with the dawn of day, "I must borrow your staff."

---

In the thick, cold mist, the workout with the villagers was just as he had expected: the complete fiasco of the true amateurs trying their hand at an art and a science beyond their comprehension. Given that its goal had not been to teach anyone anything, the result was fairly satisfactory; until he saw Mazzy Fentan's unsmiling face.

Now, they are inside the Widow Jacobs' hut—Imoen looked adequately happy, earlier, but he saw her only in passing—and he explains, trying to remember his calm, "Aerie agreed to heal the bruises."

At which, the miniature excuse for a paladin looks at him with pure loathing. "What favours Aerie receives from her gods, she had better use for the party's benefit."

Gods? "I agree," he replies. "That is why I used healing potions from my private stock instead." Orcish ones: the taste effectively prevented hypochondria.

Mazzy is furious. "Why did you do it?"

He shrugs. "To provide them with a distraction; to improve their morale; to give them a sense of power and control; to discipline them. There is no need for meddlesome casualties in our way, halfling."

"They are not your troops, Anchev!"

A snarl: she would have done the same thing, had she had the opportunity to do it first. "I see no reason to undermine your position, Fentan. You saved my life, I believe."

Mazzy is furious at him, fundamentally, because he exists, and specifically, because he exists in her close vicinity. He is an enemy; and, tall, male and charismatic; what some call a natural leader—he is also a threat: the short, halfling Mazzy must have fought long and hard for her respect. It is curious how she will deal with him; she should force him to leave.

"If I knew, for one moment, that there were any meaning to your words…" she now shakes her head: the short, auburn mane of stiff, wiry hair tied into thin strands bounces. Mazzy smells of camomile and armour polish, wears rust red under her golden armour, and keeps her left hand perpetually on the hip and the hilt of her sword as she makes small gestures with her right one; he sits down behind the table to lower himself to her height, and interrupts her, calmly, "Why should I care for your little band, Fentan?"

"Why, indeed?" she demands of him, with hidden pain and unhidden anger in her eyes. "Shouldn't you be—" She shakes the hand; Imoen did not tell her anything, then, of his matters; she finishes, "—somewhere else? Why must you have come with us?"

He smiles, and, trying to focus what natural charm he has on the small, unhappy face determined to reject him, replies, truthfully, "I am on leave."

She puts the right hand under her chin, with the index finger on her lightly, sceptically puffed-up lips, and repeats, "On leave."

"As it so happens," he repeats in turn, "On leave. With three beautiful women. The presence of my wife, my sister, and a hamster-possessed barbarian spoils the picture somewhat, I must admit, and the locale might have been chosen with some greater care—"

The unsmiling dame is not amused. "Stay away from Aerie."

"She hates me."

"Good. And Nalia."

"She may have found some affinity with my sister, I believe. Before you ask, Fentan, we exchanged exactly four words before you started to scold me this morning not unlike, if I may say so, an irate mother her wayward son after a night of drunken revelry— You want the real reason? Fine," he says, and now his voice, too, loses all traces of amusement. He tried; now, he spreads himself much more comfortably, taking much more of the limited space of the small room of the Widow Jacobs' hut, and asks, "How much do you know about the Bhaalspawn prophecies?"

"Nothing," she replies, quite making a point.

The prophecies have ruled his entire life, even when he had not yet been aware of them; very well. He does not know much of halflings, either; certainly, dead, they do not differ much from humans.

"It does not matter. All that can possibly be of any concern to you, halfling, is that my kin—Imoen's kin—we are all slated to die. Not in that vague fashion in which all the dithering, little mortals are slated to die. We are born murderers, and will die in murder."

"Imoen is a good person."

"She is. Many of us are, I believe. You have not seen her kill."

Mazzy digests the news for a brief while, tapping absently the finger on her lightly opened lips; her husband must have loved the unconscious eroticism of the gesture— He carries on, "—Do you want to know how Tethtoril, the First Reader of Candlekeep, the citadel where the prophecies are kept, interprets them?" He tells her; and then, as the thought strikes him, adds, "For all we know, what is happening here is the work of one of my siblings. There was one in Trademeet."

"The one who skinned Raissa?"

A flash of memory: a skinned Raissa, a skinned Semaj; a brief smile. "No; but you are close, halfling. His partner."

Mazzy Fentan takes her time to think, which does not bide well; eventually, carefully, she says, "I understand. But what does this have to do with my party?"

The delicate part, then. "Who, do you think, will stand against the tide of murderers and their inevitable persecutors, halfling? The holy orders, yes. But in the likes of this fleapit?" He shrugs. "My siblings must die. It is in my interest that they die as quickly and efficiently—" Mazzy's face changes, and the hand on the sword hilt twitches, almost involuntarily.

"Do you know why you are here at all, and not rotting in prison waiting for your execution, Anchev?"

The disgust from the beginning of their conversation returns; now, that she thinks she has her grip on him, Mazzy Fentan loves to loath him even more than before. "I have spoken with Imoen, yes."

"I do not like you," Mazzy announces at last. "You are everything I have always fought against: a man large in body and small in spirit, a man who enjoys tormenting those weaker than you—"

This is only half of the reason, my lady Fentan, he thinks without malice; unaware of his private amusement, Mazzy speaks on, "—I believe that the girls are wrong to think that you deserve any sort of—of a second chance. They are all still young, Imoen is your sister, and Nalia and Aerie worship Ilmater, which, from what I know of human gods, is as often wisdom as it is madness…" She takes a deep breath. "But they have shown you mercy. And you— What you are suggesting—"

She sputters for a moment; then, she shakes her head again, and asks, "If the Bhaalspawn must all die, then why shouldn't I start with you, for Imoen's sake?" Another shake of the head. "But I will not. I will not, and that is why I am a better person than you will ever be. Think about it, Anchev. For Imoen's sake, if not for your own," she says as she starts towards the hut's door. "We leave in twenty minutes."

"You worship Arvoreen," he sends after her, and, startling her into a halt, adds, "Who, from what I know of halfling gods, demands that you be vigilant, make war, and protect your people. Should you not plan beforehand how you will protect them when the time comes? There are halfling Bhaalspawn, Fentan." There must be, though he does not remember if he killed any; there haven't been any in the dreams, yet.

Mazzy Fentan refuses to deign him with a reply before she walks out. He follows her, a moment later; and, once outside, is beset by a blissful bird. _**Liar.**_

She forgot the question. I made no offer. And it was the truth.

_**Liar. Why are we really still here, master?**_

I am curious. Bored of your cat, Altair?

_**No. Happy! We have more time…**_ An embarrassed little hop and half-flap of wings. _**You will see your one again.**_

I should not.

---

The reason why they do not leave within twenty minutes is Minsc.

They are all gathered in the heavy mist on the small meadow behind the Widow Jacobs' hut; Imoen is content with Pangur, Aerie, Kriemhild and Nalia, Minsc is chopping wood—thump, the axe falls; thump, the axe falls—and Sarevok himself is flying Altair.

The women make quite the colourful group, in all senses of the word; and, when Mazzy Fentan returns dressed head to toe in dwarven-made golden armour, Minsc lets go of his axe and announces, "Minsc was waiting for the little knight!"

"Yes, Minsc? What is it?" the halfling replies, with the rare, gentle smile she reserves only for him.

The Rashemi stumbles for a moment, and Sarevok, ephemerally, wants to hit him to push him into thought; eventually, he says, slowly, "Minsc had a dream."

"A dream," Mazzy repeats. "What was the dream about, Minsc?"

"Mairyn," Minsc says, reverentially; and falls silent.

"Mairyn," Mazzy repeats again. "And who or what is Mairyn, Minsc?"

"Mairyn is the spirit of the forest!" Minsc says. "Mairyn said that the wolves from the forest are gone. But they forgot to take their shadows with them!"

Mazzy has doubt clearly painted on her little face; Sarevok frowns, tears away from the vague musing of how the spirit of this dark and prickly forest must look like, and says, "He is correct, halfling. I saw these wolves yesterday. There is no doubt that they were shadows."

Mazzy shoots him a pointed look, and asks, "And why, pray tell, you failed to mention this yesterday, Anchev?"

"We failed to communicate yesterday," he replies easily, because they did: Sarevok had never been so thoroughly ignored in his life. Mazzy made it clear that his presence was undesirable, and he decided to comply with her wish, for the interim— Meanwhile, as he speaks, Nalia mutters, "Well, it is not like you would listen."

Mazzy's bewildered, betrayed attention now turns to her second-in-command, "Excuse me?"

"I said," Nalia replies, louder, "that it is not like you would listen. You didn't even ask me what I learnt from Jermien—he's that Cowled Wizard," she explains, clearly for the party's sake. "And he told me that the tale of Umar is more than just a tale. The Cowled Wizards have evidence that the Umar Witch actually exists! Except that the tale got muddled somewhere on the way, because she is not a witch, but a lich."

"A lich," Mazzy repeats.

"Yes," the redhead replies, now with all her hackles up, "A lich. She hides for a century, and then wakes up, kidnaps three people—exactly three each time—drains life from them, like a vampire, perhaps, and returns to sleep. They have the husk of one of her victims from a century ago over in Athkatla."

"They do."

"That's why Jermien came here, actually. To prove her existence. But he says that he would have to see the body of a victim to compare it to that one they have on display there. And he says that, according to eyewitnesses' reports from the previous time, animals should not be taken. He says she might have changed her signature, or something… I didn't really understand this part…"

"Well, that settles it," Mazzy replies, suddenly satisfied. "The Umar Witch kidnaps only humans. Three humans. If she exists, she is not behind it. If. If this Jermien had not invented this tale. He might have come here simply to escape the wizard in-fighting. Did he, by chance, tell you what he was going to do about the witch once he found her?"

"Well… He started… constructing… a golem…" Nalia says, and, promptly, on seeing Mazzy's doubtful face, falls silent; next to her, Imoen frowns, and, looking at him, mouths, "In-fighting?"

"Later," he replies, in the same manner; Mazzy looks around her party and sighs heavily, "All right. Does anyone else have anything to add?"

Minsc and Aerie start speaking simultaneously; Mazzy sighs again, makes a curt gesture with a gloved right hand; the left is, once more, resting on the hilt of the sword—and says, "Minsc?"

"Mairyn needs the heroes' help! The Evil which nests in the old temple seeped out like sour milk from a trough and poisoned the forest. Possibly with the smell of cheese! That would be great Evil, indeed. And it made Mairyn very, very sad…" The Rashemi himself is now sad. "The heroes must go and pull the Evil out!"

Then, the Rashemi wrinkles his brow in deep thought. "Aah!" he cries at last. "Boo reminds me to tell Mazzy that the wolf Anath will help the heroes!"

The halfling sighs, nods, and asks, "Aerie?"

Aerie smiles worriedly. "The birds? Th-they are not singing. A-and there is the weather…?"

It is several hours after dawn already: the cold, thick, sun-obscuring mist should have lifted long ago. Another indication of possible undead involvement— Sarevok watches Mazzy Fentan, curious what the halfling will do now; if her decision will coincide with what he would do in her place.

She thinks for a moment, and then says, "All right. Do you know where to search for this… Anath, Minsc?"

Minsc nods, "Mairyn told Minsc."

"Can you do it on your own?"

The barbarian straightens proudly. "Minsc and Boo can. Do not forget Boo!"

Unbelievably, a hamster squeak follows; Mazzy flashes another brief smile, and nods, "Then you—and Boo, of course—have my permission to do so. Kriemhild…"

His wife, tense and taut, is rather scared by this sudden call into attention; Imoen touches her lightly on the shoulder in a misguided attempt to soothe her, and Kriemhild barely manages to control herself instead of lashing out at his sister. Mazzy smiles at her, too, and says, "Will you go with me to the ogres, or orcs, or whoever they are? To speak with them? I will need a strong hand with me."

Kriemhild searches for him, but he decides to offer no guidance, either way; she wavers hesitantly; she nods once, "I will go."

"Good. Now," Mazzy turns to the rest of her party. "Nalia, Imoen… Anchev. Under the circumstances, I don't think that the monsters—whatever… whoever they are—are responsible. Not to mention that my host told me that he spoke to one of them, and that Madulf appeared to be rather peaceful… Still, we cannot neglect this lead. In the meantime, I want the three of you to go to Merella's cabin and search for any clues. Even if Merella is dead, she may have noticed something before she was killed. See also if there is any map of this forest. Perhaps any references to a shadow place, or an old temple. Aerie—"

"I— I will ask around here," Aerie says, with a grimace of determination. "And cook. Erlin Hendrick brought the chickens," she turns to Sarevok. "W-when you were talking with Mazzy."

"I paid him," Imoen adds, looking at him meaningfully; and, transiently, he wonders if he is about to hear for the third time that he is to keep away from Aerie.

Mazzy lets the whole exchange pass by her pointy ears, and says, "Actually, Aerie, I was wondering if you might do something about the mist."

---

_**I know this one, master. She is praying to The Masked Leaf to protect you from evil and grant you safe passage through the forest.**_

To Baervan Wildwanderer? But he is a gnome god—

He frowns; but Aerie already finishes the unfamiliar prayer, voiced in the brisk, cheerful, alien language which must be gnomes' own tongue. Then, she turns to him; or, more accurately, to the bird on his hand.

"I-I will need a feather," she says, now to him, now to Altair.

His first instinct is, ridiculously enough, to tell her that there are nine not plucked chickens clucking somewhere around here. Judging from the look Imoen's cat is casting at the elf, he is not alone in that opinion.

"Altair," he speaks out loud, not taking his eyes off Aerie.

_**Yes, master.**_

His eagle lowers her head, and then patiently spreads each of her wings and her tail in turn, letting Aerie search through her royal plumage; eventually, the elf pulls out one perfect golden feather, and begins another chant.

This entreaty has a very different melody, a very slow and repetitive litany, and it is in one of the elf-tongues, and, to his surprise, he understands it; the dragon blood in his veins, which he has thought has long gone and taken its gift with it, heats up and burns him, and the meaning of words into his mind. _Aerdrie Faenya, take care of us; Queen of the Avariel, watch over us; Winged Mother, bring wind to us; Lady of Air and Wind, sweeten air for us; You of the Azure Plumage, clear the sky for us; Bringer of Rain and Storms, lift mists for us… do not forget us… care for us… protect us…_

For a moment, he muses about what he would like the prayers to him to sound once he ascends; but soon, a gust of divine wind, first timid, then stronger, dissolves the mist around them. They should not lose themselves in the forest now.

---

"The Cowled Wizards are not a forte, but a major weakness of Amn's political system, Nalia. As an independent institution, they are completely beyond any means of official control. Of course, given their current weakness, it may be a relatively easy task to incorporate them as an official branch of the government, subject to the courts' rule—"

Accompanied by Altair and Pangur both, they are walking through the shady woods of elm and fir; the mist is gone, but the forest is dark, and so, they amuse themselves with a conversation.

"—On the other hand, their relative independence would not have held so long had there not been strong pressure in the Council of Six to keep the status quo," he muses. It is a fairly interesting problem. "In any case, the Cowled Wizards are, comparatively, only a minor hurdle on the way to the simplification of Amn's judiciary system—"

"The virtual autonomy of the halfling and gnome communities does not help," Nalia sighs, "Even in Athkatla—"

"Actually, the confusion caused by the parallel structures of the civilian guard with its associated courts and the Radiant Heart with the temples—"

"Yes, yes, I know!" Nalia almost rolls her eyes. "'The Radiant Heart is a paramilitary organisation. When it operates inside Athkatla, it undermines the authority of the guard. When it operates outside of it, it undermines the authority of the army.' You've hammered that point enough, Sarevok! And you have convinced me, yes. But you never said what you propose to do about it. We cannot just disband it!"

"I never suggested it. I merely pointed out the inherent weakness of the system."

"My brother simply does not like the paladins," Imoen laughs. "They are too good at what they do. And it's not easy to corrupt them." She smiles, and adds sweetly, "Besides, dear brother, let us not forget the Shadow Thieves. Wouldn't you say that they, too, present a major hurdle in the path of any reform?"

"Of course," Sarevok agrees easily, watching his brown-haired sister and her friend, walking together hand in hand. Nalia, he has just decided, following that little game which started on its own in the morning, smells slightly exotically: of vanilla and tangerine.

Now, she sighs again. "Of course, as long as coin does not stop flowing from Maztica, and Amn is prosperous, there will be no strong social pressure for change. The poverty of the lower classes here is built on the blood of the native people there…"

Sarevok smirks. "On the other hand, one may argue that, since the more enterprising elements of the lower castes are drawn to Maztica, social tension is prevented here, while the coin can be put in the employ of social reform."

"How so?"

He shrugs. "By paying for education, for one thing. Obligatory schooling dissociated from any religious structures, but fostering universal literacy and knowledge of the arcana."

Nalia looks at him curiously. "I think that Mazzy would agree with you on that point. That's why we organised the auction in Trademeet—"

This is what gave him the idea, but he does not say it; instead, he interrupts brusquely, "I did not say that I would agree with her."

Nalia blinks in surprise; Imoen supplies helpfully, "You really should not believe in half the things my brother says. He can be a politician, if he wants to." She looks at him, not without pride, and says, "If he had his way, I guess, it would be that everything's free in love and business, and he rules everyone with iron fist. And, from time to time, organises a wee war to release the—how did you put it, little brother?—social tension?" She narrows her eyes, and casts at him an unequivocally evil glare. "It's almost better that he prefers to be a god."

He laughs; and, since my lady Duchess d'Arnise is looking at him with lips puckered in thought, he says, seriously, "Do you know what the most important obstacle on the path to reforming Amn is, Nalia?"

"No," Nalia replies carefully. "Do tell, Sarevok."

"The peerage. The system makes sense under a monarchy; but Amn is a merchants' state, a plutocratic oligarchy… You are a duchess, and that is the most important feudal rank—but the feudal system is obsolete here. Your post should be tied to some obligations to the king and the state in return for your privileges; but there is no king in Amn, and your entire duty boils down, essentially, to paying taxes—"

"Exactly! The noble titles are mostly symbolic, now," Nalia d'Arnise defends herself and her way of life, feebly, from the attack.

"Are they? Successful merchants are routinely ennobled and, at times, enfeoffed. The upper echelons of the military, the guard, and the Radiant Heart are almost uniformly noble. A high noble title can take you much further than a plebeian background; the system almost ensures that the most ambitious men and women turn to the Shadow Thieves, the Cowled Wizards, and to Maztica—"

"Do you remember Cernd, Nalia?" Imoen suddenly asks, "You helped him, in Athkatla, just before you left for the north—"

"Yes. Yes, I remember him," Nalia says, flustered; Imoen smiles, briefly; Nalia returns the smile; Sarevok takes note to ask his sister what she meant by this particular question, and trumps his argument with, "And even you, duchess, will not argue your own case before the courts, but— We are here, I believe."

---

Merella's house is a fairly large cabin with steeped roof; it is solidly built from raw timber, blackened by the sun and the rain, underpinned with large, flat, grey stones, and overgrown with wild wine; there are shutters on the square windows, because the windows are glassless in this wilderness. It fits the place and the mood of the dark forest, as is the wont of the houses of those with ties to nature. He has not forgotten Adratha's cottage, or the druid village.

The shutters are, unsurprisingly, torn off all the windows; unsurprisingly, the furniture inside is broken; but, surprisingly, there are no traces of blood. Imoen's cat walks around, putting his pink nose into the hut's every nook and cranny. Eventually, he jumps onto the table, stretches, and yawns.

"Yes, Pangur," Imoen says, with a frown and a sigh. "Just like in the village. No blood anywhere. It's almost as if those wolves charmed her to leave," she adds; and then, asks him, "Can't some vampires turn into wolves, brother? I think they can?"

"Yes," he replies. "However, those I saw were shades and shadows, sister. They did not appear to be anything else but wolves."

"Minsc said that that ghost of his told him that they used to be real wolves," Nalia d'Arnise concludes. "Well. Let's start searching."

They do; but the search is not long. For one thing, there is a letter on the table, right under where Pangur is sitting.

_17 Mirtul_

"Three days ago," Nalia comments.

_To anyone who is reading it,_

_I hope that, if the inhabitants of Imnesvale were intelligent enough to send anyone here, they also chose someone who will understand the importance of this message, and deliver it to a literate person._

"By the way: can the halfling read?"

"Yes. But not fluently. That is why she sent the three of us here."

"And here I thought that it was because she prefers to deal with Kriemhild rather than with my brother."

_To be brief: Merella is my old friend. I remember that, once, she mentioned an old temple in this forest which had to be sealed off after some foolish wizards or priests meddled with things they had better left alone. My guess, given the clear implication of the undead in this business, is that some other cretin of a mage broke those seals. Probably to see what would happen. It is their style._

"His style, I like."

"You would, brother."

"I don't think I really like the way he talks about wizards."

_Merella, as I said, is my old friend. The last traces of human feet lead away from the house. If there is a chance that she is still alive, I must follow on it. However, my advice to you, whoever you are, is not to act on your own, but to find priests to exorcise the grounds. There should be some in the Understone—the villagers should know the details._

_Valygar Corthala_

---

As the three wizards, having perused Valygar Corthala's letter, start to comb through Merella's hut in search of any map, or book, or journal which might help them, another search for a lost tome takes place, far away, in the catacombs of Athkatla's oldest graveyard.

Korgan, proud battlerager of the Bloodaxe clan, swears, pulls his axe out of the skeleton, kicks it to make sure that it be absolutely, positively dead this time, and no comin' back, no sirrah—

Then, he looks around, suspiciously, from under his helmet, at his current company, those pansy longlimbs, Shagbag and Scrooloose, now both whitewashed. There been two others with them. Seems he chopp'd'em together with the skeletons. That be the blood on 'is axe. Skeletons don't bleed. Har. Har.

This whole job be a rotten deal, and that be the start an' the end of it. Come first, the vampires. Who'e'er heard of vampires in Athkatla? But nay, not one body be willin' to risk a head for a book in a tomb. Korgan 'imself least o'all. But the job be paid well.

Then, when, at last, he finds these two, and those two others—what be their names? No matter. They be dead—turns that the vampires be real. An' there be bloody paladins crowdin' his workplace. Pimlico's gettin' worried, threatening to off the coin for the delay—

But the worst part of all be that constant bloody feeling that he be bloody _watched_.

Korgan gargles, spits, snorts and, to cheer himself, thinks of what he's going to do with the coin when he gets it—there be a new, barely used halfling lass from up north over at Nin's in the Coronet, and Lehtinan's always lax with the cat's-piss he calls beer. More, there be slave fights to bet on. There be nothing as wenches, beer an' gore after a good day's massacre.

Pimlico'd better pay him well, he reckons. His axe be yearning to hit something that bleeds, not these rotten skeletons. T'think of it in depth—

There is a delightful, pearly laughter, and a playful voice calls out from the darkness, "Come, mousey, mousey…"


	34. V: Queenside Castling, 5

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**5**

In the luxurious heart of his subterranean kingdom, Aran Linvail is reading a report.

He finishes his read, makes a few notes, sends off a bodyguard to fulfil his orders; then, he smiles and picks up another file. This one is old, from the previous day's morning, and details the escape of a dangerous prisoner from Trademeet.

He reads it, not for the news, but for the sheer entertainment of it. He is rather fond of the man of whom it speaks; and, to a much smaller extent, because he knows her mostly from rumour and hearsay, and barely from acquaintance, of the woman of whom it does not speak.

He wonders, for a brief moment, when he will hear from, or about, his lover again.

---

The mist is gone, but large clouds obscure the pale sun sitting somewhere high on the pasty, washed-out sky; what little landscape there is among the dark fir and elm is painted in bland, watered-down colours, weak rather than merely subdued. "Mazzy was here."

"She was?" Imoen asks. "What did she say?"

"Nothing. Kriemhild and she took Minister Lloyd with them, and went back," Aerie replies. She is sitting on her cloak on the watercolour meadow on the dark forest's edge, amongst armfuls upon armfuls of wild roses, weaving a wreath of them. "T-the boys brought them here," she said, blushing, when first asked about them, "F-for me."

She has not learnt much about a temple, or a place of shadows, beyond that no one, save Merella, could possibly know where such a place is; but there is a simmering stew, set very carefully downwind from her and her flowers, and it does not smell bad: of meat, and fat, and spices, and vegetables.

"And Minsc?" Nalia asks. "He should have returned by now, too…"

Aerie shakes her head. "I haven't seen him."

"Well," Imoen says, "in that case…" She looks at Nalia, who replies, heartlessly, blushing, "Let's go."

Aerie blinks. "Go? W-where?"

Imoen bites her lip; Nalia puckers hers. "We— We must talk alone, Aerie, Imoen and I."

The elf looks from the human to the half-human, and says, wide-eyed, stricken, not quite understanding, "You do?"

"My brother will take care of you, will you, little brother?" Imoen asks, and, still fairly taken aback himself, and now assaulted from ambush by the sudden impertinence, he nevertheless decides to stand equal to the task, and replies, politically, "As you wish, sister. With pleasure;" thus, jointly with Imoen's look, cutting Nalia's protests short.

As he reviews the elf, and as she looks at him with fair distaste, he can hear the distant echo of his bird's laughter. Altair left for a walk with Pangur as soon as they entered the village; and now, his killer bird, who has the soul of a poet, but who cannot sing, because eagles can only cry and croak, and Sarevok had not been provident enough to give her the gift of song, happily, silently, whispers to her cat,_** Bana seni gerek seni… **_

He does not forget what she told him the loving, callous verse means; it is you I need, you I want.

---

But the two women are gone, armed with swords, bows, and magic; the pale, uncertain sun is the strongest, now that it is midday; and the place is not his to question his sister's quest to find a secluded, undisturbed spot in the vicinity of the cramped village where everyone knows each other, and every boy the whereabouts of every girl.

Instead, he looks into the twin deep pools of Aerie's large eyes, watered down by the gloom into pale blue—and asks, "Do you want me to leave, elf?"

"N-no," Aerie lies, and he shrugs. Imoen purchased some scrolls for him in Trademeet, some new spells, and so, he applies himself to them, to the improved haste spell, and the spell which will deflect spells cast at him, and the one which will protect him from the enchanted weapons; and that incredibly interesting one which will protect him from certain types of attacks by magic, and which he wishes he knew when he knew Irenicus.

Shortly, the exercise bores him: the patterns spread on the parchment of his spell-book and in his mind are clear and palpable; self-evident, almost. The more complex version of the globe of invulnerability? Take the basic pattern, and build upon it. The spell of pierce magic? Combine the one which lowers the resistance and an improved version of the secret word. To a certain extent, the arcane arts are as any other mental faculty; after the initial hurdle of acquainting a new manner of thinking about reality is overcome, the rest is elementary.

He watches Aerie as she potters about, seemingly as unconcerned with his presence as he is with hers, tending to the meal, weaving her little wreath of wild flowers, singing lightly, atonally, both to herself and to her unborn child; in truth, casting, ever so often, a surreptitious, frightened look at him, and quickly escaping when she meets his impudently open gaze. Aerie, the divine, walks Faerûn basked in mild radiance which comes not of one, but of three gods; she wears white, gold, and the brown cloak of Wildwanderer's worshippers; Altair's feather of the Winged Mother's clergy is now glittering in her hair, and, afraid of him, detesting him, and gracious to him in compliance with her third god's creed, she has as little to tell to him as he has to tell to her; even though he has not forgotten his eagle's passing puzzle. It has merely ceased to attract him.

He closes the spell-book, lies on his back, closes his eyes, and starts to consider the assault, the abduction, and the assassination a duchess wants him to perform.

In the back of his mind, patterns unfold; a weave far more fascinating than Mystra's. Its strands: a duchess as a front, a pawn, an ally; a dragon's hoard as initial investment; an offer he did not make to Mazzy Fentan, because making such an offer to the obdurate, charitable halfling would be futile—

—but one he may well make to Aran Linvail: but this time, the countryside must be scoured with great precision. Murderous precision, he smirks. The assassins must not be fools: there will be a challenge in properly identifying the latent kin, those still ignorant of their power, not yet beacons shining darkly to every passing witless cleric; and efficiency is required: false positives are as detrimental as false negatives.

The meeting with Bodhi and the search for Irenicus must then fall to secondary importance; but he has almost learnt to live with the headaches, and the dreams, and the pain; and Imoen was, perhaps, right: it may well be profitable to postpone the chase until he acquires some further magic aptitude, especially since Irenicus had been an elf, and had had a long life to learn his. And Irenicus may himself grow bored of the game of hide-and-seek, and come out of his hiding to face Sarevok, once a challenge is properly issued—

"W-why are you so sad?"

"If my presence bothers you, elf, this is your second chance to say it," he replies, without opening his eyes. "Otherwise, this conversation is over."

Aerie draws a deep breath, and starts again, "W-why must y-you be so unpleasant? I only want to talk."

After a moment of mutual silence, he hears, "Y-you talk to N-Nalia a-and Mazzy."

In appreciation of the power of the advanced logical reasoning behind this statement, he opens his eyes—Aerie shudders lightly in fear and disgust—and, smirking, states, "Yes. And they both told me to keep away from you."

Aerie, ridiculously, pouts. "They did, didn't they?" she asks angrily, and Sarevok realises, belatedly, that the admonition may have been more prudent than he expected. "I believe, elf," he says lightly, "that they are worried that I may hurt you."

Aerie is now irate like a rabid rabbit; Altair's feather in her hair jumps gracefully in her hair, reflecting sunlight, as she shakes her vixen-like head. "I am older than the two of them together!"

"They are correct," he reminds her coolly. "I already have. And, I believe, the last time you did not heed a similar warning, you found yourself with child." He sits up, rubs his eyes, blinks and watches the elf, curious whether there is any truth to his guess. He would almost want to be proven wrong.

He is not: Aerie scowls, and, looking at her enlarged breasts and her engorged belly with some slight revulsion, demands of him, "W-well, that is one e-experience behind me already, isn't it?! I-I'm not about to repeat it anytime soon, am I?"

"Yes, it is," he laughs, and Aerie, involuntarily, shudders again. "And perhaps you are not… Very well. Since you intend neither to cry at me nor to fall for me, tell me, elf, what it is you intend to share with me that will make your company worth my time."

"W-worth… y-your time?!"

"Yes," he replies lazily to the indignant cry, "I refuse to be the butt of self-congratulatory compassionate Ilmatari condescendence. If you will not cry at me, then, by all means, let us talk. But on a matter of any essence."

"For example?" Aerie is rather intrigued: the wild roses are forgotten as she is watching him, and he hopes that those who left him with this pregnant, temperamental, many years his senior, child, will return soon. "The stew," he reminds her calmly. "Or am I to take care of it as well?"

Aerie looks around, starts to her feet, and begins to stir the stew. "W-well?"

"You are bound to know some magic of illusions, elf," fraught for small talk, he begins, leaning, then lying on his back again, crossing his arms under his head, watching the elf, who is now, again, not a child, but a woman, an eye-catching creature who parlays with three gods and to whose needs three gods tend. He picks up a wild rose from the ground. It smells very fine, very delicately, and he should enjoy the smell more than he, in truth, does—

The elf, meanwhile, stutters, curious, "Y-yes, I do. B-but how do you know, Sarevok?" and captures back his attention. "It is obvious," he shrugs. "You are an elf, which lends you natural aptitude in magic, and you spent some time among the gnomes, who are skilled in this particular branch of it. You would have learnt some of it with them. The stew is fine already, by the way, I believe."

"Y-yes, I know," Aerie replies, with a hint of irritation; carefully hidden, but yearning to escape. "I don't want it to grow cold before Mazzy and the others return…" She sighs. "W-where are they, anyway?"

He shrugs again. "Entertaining themselves better than we are, possibly." Altair certainly is, judging from her incessant, ecstatic recitation of obscure rhyme. _**Aşk olsun. **_Let there be love, he rejoins with the countersign, amused by his neglectful, egoistic bird; may your love be beautiful. _**Aşkin cemâl olsun.**_

---

"Uncle Quayle taught me well," Aerie says, with rather more cheer than before, apparently picking up on his offer of non-hostility; and he starts. "Uncle Quayle," he repeats, diplomatically. "A gnome, I presume?"

Aerie is confused. "Y-you don't know?" She blinks. "Imoen didn't tell you?"

Imoen did not. "My sister is not in the habit of informing me of her associates' history," he replies, recalling, apparently, Cernd; spreading himself comfortably on the trodden, flower-inlaid grass as Aerie leaves the stew to simmer. He further thinks whether to tender a slight addition of coriander to the dish; then, drops the suggestion. Aerie is as protective of her stew as his wife, and less likely to poison him, whether by accident or on purpose.

The elf, meanwhile, giggles, in a manner childish rather than childlike; and says, "I thought you knew about him! He raised me. I-in the circus."

She looks at him, coyly; to what extent the coquetry is intended, and to what extent a miasma of the cynicism of his own mind, he has no interest, at present, to determine. "He did," noncommittally, he replies. Unlike Nalia, Aerie is brimming with the desire to speak of herself; reciprocally, he has little desire to hear about the circus girl who is currently asking him, "B-But how did you know, then? A-about him?"

"You prayed to a gnome god earlier," he replies, bored, lazily. "What did your uncle teach you?"

Aerie is hesitant. "L-little tricks… Are you s-sure y-you want me t-to show y-you…?" The stutter becomes unbearable, and, in sudden consideration that in Trademeet, while escaping from prison, Imoen knew how to turn herself invisible, and he did not, and had to drink an invisibility potion—he cuts her short and lies, "Had I not been sure, elf, I would not have asked you." The stew will be fine on its own.

The little circus tricks first make one blind and deaf and scared for a moment, long enough for the curtain call; long enough to excite the circus audience. Then, Aerie opens a door of shadow; reappears in a different place; casts a minor cantrip which distorts her features; another, which makes seven Aeries appear. For a moment, he chases her absently, trying to determine which one is the most real to his other eyes: the moody child or the pregnant woman, the elven priestess or the gnome-raised circus girl; the delicate figurine, perfect, bland and lifeless, or the faithful, steadfast Ilmatari, consummate in her enduring folly; either of these, or Altair's half-forgotten riddle— She entertains him, abstractly.

The most complex illusion creates a faithful decoy to mislead the attention of the audience while the illusionist, hidden, operates the true stunt; in this case, the true stunt consists of a fan of vivid, clashing colours, azure blue, and grass green, and beetroot purple, coming crashing straight at his face from an empty spot of gloom as the faux Aerie is smiling, innocently, several steps away, behind her cauldron.

There is the laughter of village boys, watching them from some hidden nook; amused, he salutes Aerie with a rose and every private intention to learn the misleading spell. It may be useful the next time the paladins, or, worse yet, Mazzy Fentan, chase him—

The flushed elf curtseys and giggles; "I knew that you two would get on well together," Imoen hugs him with the briefest sense of grateful surprise which tells him that she is telling a downright lie, but that she, too, is trying to keep to their last concord. The duchess, on her part, is furious; especially, for some reason, at the inoffensive rose. If disintegrating it out of his hand were not so terribly impolite, she would have probably done it the instant she saw it.

"You are pregnant," she tells Aerie instead with a frown of earnest concern. "We're leaving later today. What were you thinking, little thing, straining yourself like that? And you," she turns to him. "I thought that you were a serious man. Haven't you thought that… No. You probably did not."

He did not. "If the elf is strong enough to face the undead—" he rejoins as Imoen hisses, "Nalia!" and Aerie taps a little foot, "I-I'm fine, Nalia. Stop, please."

Nalia is rather hurt. "I'm only thinking that you shouldn't have strained yourself unnecessarily. And that he probably hasn't done anything to help you in all that time we were gone."

He has not, although what with—given that, apart from the stew, everything is ready and packed to go—is a mystery. "Oh, y-you just k-know it's about H-Haer'Dalis, again!" Aerie cries in accord with his thoughts; and, superfluous on the scene, he decides to leave to the calls of, "Aerie, he hurt you!", "W-well, I-I got better!" and "How can you defend him?" which he finds it impossible to decide if they refer to him or to that other man.

---

In the background of his thoughts, the happy birdsong does not relent. "Sad, brother?"

"Not sad. Thinking, sister," he replies, juggling his stone between his fingers, as Imoen finds him after he has found his loneliness by the well, in the greatest crowd, in the heart of the village; no one else disturbs him here. "I had to chase off the audience," she declares as she drops down by him on the bench. "Not that the whole place won't know what they are yelling about by the evening," she adds demurely.

"By the evening, if the halfling finally moves, we will not be here," he replies; hopefully, the halfling will decide to move. He is growing restless in this lack of action, and the foundations of the plan to recover a duchy have been found and founded. He watches his sister curiously, and asks, to change the topic, "How do you like Nalia, sister? Is she up to your discriminating standards?"

Imoen looks at him oddly. "So, brother, you have noticed." He frowns. "Of course I have noticed." It was hard not to notice.

She smiles, and teases, "No comment?" Her face changes as he tries to think of a comment apart from, _In the end, it was only her choice and your choice, sister_— "You are miserable, brother," she tries, tentatively, to trespass again, "I know how you look when you are thinking, and this isn't it. What's going on? Is anything wrong?" she replies to her own entreaty, questing.

"Nothing," he replies, curtly. "What of them, sister?" he nods in the direction of the Widow Jacobs' hut, behind which Nalia and Aerie may be crying at, or with, each other. "Haer'Dalis is the man, I take it?"

Imoen gives him one last look, and shrugs. "Tiefling, actually, I think, brother… He saved her from some gnome illusionist—"

He frowns, again. "Her uncle?"

Imoen laughs. "Oh, so she told you about her uncle? No, Quayle, from what she says, is a sweet old gnome. But there was some problem with the circus they both worked in, and Haer'Dalis… rescued them. Quayle did not like him, but," a shrug, "when the circus was leaving Athkatla, Aerie stayed behind. She and the man separated, she had nowhere to go, she took up with Mazzy to go to Nashkel, the circus was already gone from there, too, she stayed with Mazzy, turned out that she was pregnant. End of story, brother."

He fills the gaps with tears, and follows on the most interesting lead, "The child is part demon."

"The mother is an Ilmatari," Imoen replies. "I think that Nalia tried to convince her to… to kill it. But Aerie can be stubborn if she wants to."

He snorts: if mercy be measured by the amount of damage it deals to the immediate environment— "What is she planning to do with it, instead? Carry it around as she fights the undead?"

His brown-haired sister puts her chin on her palms, and her elbows on her knees; and says, reluctantly, perhaps unwilling to speak badly of her friend, "I think that she does not really know what she wants, for now, little brother. After she cried yesterday, she swore that she would never talk to you again. And today…" A wrinkled nose. "You saw what happened."

"I believe I did," he agrees easily, remembering the vague boredom of an heiress he once knew, back when he was still impressed that he might deal with heiresses as an equal; she sought excitement with him, and when she found it, she returned crying to her father, just as she had returned crying from the previous such adventure— He killed them both, he muses, Rieltar wanted to save his foster son's reputation, and ordered him to make up for his error in judgment; this must have been about the time the dreams started, and—

—Imoen, meanwhile, finishes, "I don't think that me and Nalia…" A self-conscious sigh. "—Nalia and I should have left her behind, after all. But when Nalia tries to take care of her, she gets angry."

"But she's good to Kriemhild," Imoen, incongruently, cheers up slightly as he draws his sister close to himself; and then, with a smirk, changes the topic. "Have you ever heard of sequencing and contingency spells, brother? Nalia—"

---

Deep within Imoen, there is a lucent crystal; a sharp shard of white ice and silver moonlight, forced by the pressure of her life into a clear, frigid diamond. This is her taint and her first self: the grim, deer-like, brown-eyed, brown-haired, pale huntress and killer. She has saved a deer's life, and killed a swan instead; yet humans kill deer more often than swans to subsist. Her tale, if it ever comes to be, will twist to fit the hungry public's expectations.

About the taint wraps the warm, soft glow which is Imoen's other self; her human self: a little, playful, cat-like thief and the swan-like, graceful promise of renewal and dawn; these are the patterns, now rose, now grey, now light celadon green, like an aurora wafting now and then, mingling and mixing, surfacing and disappearing, playing on the facets of the unyielding crystal which yearns to freeze them, trap them, and Imoen whole. Yet the sister does not smell of winter; elf-like, brown-eyed in her green and grey clothes, she smells like grey apples, fresh, tangy and familiar—

---

The Rashemi returns to an uneasy ceasefire; the four of them are eating the stew and discussing spells. Nalia, it has been discovered, is the most proficient wizard of them; she apologised to him for her earlier outburst, stiffly, at Imoen's prompt, but her lips are still puckered. Sequencers and contingencies, spells which release other spells at will or in pre-set specific conditions, appear to be extremely useful—

The Rashemi returns. "Glorious day!" he roars. "Minsc and Boo found the wolf Anath! Why is my witch so sad?" he halts.

Aerie smiles a small smile. "I-I'm not sad, Minsc," she says despite the clear evidence to the contrary; and so, the man bellows, "Here! Take Boo, let him comfort you!"

_**Master?**_

No, he replies, suddenly amused, searching for Altair: she is perched on the eaves of the Widow Jacobs' hut, watching the fuzzy, sand-brown hamster. Imoen's cat is crouching nearby; his tail is lashing—

Before long, Sarevok is being very deeply, very thoroughly and very conscientiously scratched as he catches the blurred, rosy-grey ball of spitting feline fury mid-leap. There is some magic in Pangur's claws, and he must fight to overcome sudden lethargy; and also, and almost too late, the instinctive draw to tighten his grip and crush the familiar's neck. "Do keep an eye on your cat, sister," he tells Imoen pleasantly as he lowers the ungrateful beast into her lap. Pangur eyes him evilly, and, if anything, this one expression confirms to him indisputably that familiars do, indeed, take after their masters—

"What of the wolf, Rashemi?" he asks as he downs a healing potion. Aerie, giggling in her objectionable manner, returned the rodent to his owner and moved to heal him, and he shakes his head; it is unnecessary.

The man, in his furs, leathers and Aeger's hide, processes the events. "I thank you," he says carefully. "Boo is a very wise miniature giant space hamster. But even a very wise hamster can do very little against the sharp teeth of a cat."

"We agree on this point, I believe," Sarevok replies graciously as the rodent in question looks at him with small, beady eyes, before scurrying into his master's sleeve. There are assorted snorts and giggles; and, desperate, he tries once again to breach the communication barrier. "The wolf, Rashemi?"

"Anath is a smart wolf! She did not lose her shadow," Minsc says. "But if Boo had not stopped me in time, I would have told her some very, very pointed words, indeed. As pointed as the point of my sword! Even in a world of wolf eat wolf, poor old ladies should be left alone!"

Aerie gasps; Nalia asks, "Anath killed the Widow Jacobs?"

"A wolf, although a dog, is no lazy gnoll!" Minsc replies vehemently. "People are not here to be eaten, but Anath killed to live. To live to exact her vengeance on the Shade Lord! I cannot explain as well as Boo can, but Minsc will swear for the wolf," he nods seriously, and repeats, looking around the gathered faces, "Anath is no gnoll!"

"The Shade Lord?" Imoen asks, frowning.

"The Shade Lord is the name of the Evil which lurks in the old temple," Minsc replies matter-of-factly; Sarevok finds himself equally amused and exasperated by the idea that Minsc, and, unfortunately, Boo, are currently the main source of the Fentan Knights' intelligence, to be envied and admired in its efficiency by the four wizards present: in the end, Merella's private scribbles, written in a heavy, torpid hand, revealed nothing—

"—The city men released him, and now, he is the bane of forest animals and people alike! See how Boo's whiskers tremble when I speak of him?" A brief glance at Imoen's face tells Sarevok that his sister's thoughts run a course similar to his own.

"—Let us tarry not in crushing him! Anath and glory await us in the forest!" the painted man now finishes; then, he looks around anxiously. "But where is the little knight? Mazzy! Where is Mazzy?"

The impression, Sarevok muses, is that any moment soon, the Rashemi will release his Boo to search for Mazzy Fentan in the likes of mouse holes; but there is some merit to the man's question. "Where, indeed," he smiles himself in accord, politely, wintrily, at the duchess who is a halfling's second in command. "Taken by the monsters, perhaps, or," a curt nod in Minsc's direction, "by the Shade Lord. Have you a plan for this particular contingency, Nalia?"

"No— No," Nalia replies, with some slight surprise and embarrassment, as Imoen slides, demonstratively, a hand around her waist and glowers at him. Amused—the duchess really is far from being a true duchess, yet—he orders his bird to search for the halfling. See far, Altair, he tells his familiar to cast the spell which will pierce the dense, dark canopy of trees; she will see nothing, otherwise.

_**Yes, master.**_

Meanwhile, the Rashemi's look, previously alarmed, becomes frantic. "What do I hear now? The little knight, in the clutches of evil?! This cannot be! We must go and free her!"

"W-we don't know that, Minsc," Aerie says, "It was just a joke. Sarevok wasn't serious. Stay, please."

"We will wait an hour more, and then we'll set out," Imoen adds.

Minsc fumes. "A joke?! The imperilment of a worthy comrade is no laughing matter, Boo says! But if my witches order me to stay, then I will stay," he adds, though still rather unconvinced; and, apparently losing all interest in the topic, turns away and starts to feed Boo some obscure grains and nuts.

"So, it really is the undead," Nalia says then, after a moment of silence; and sighs, "Again. Mazzy will not be happy when she hears that."

"Why?" Sarevok asks curiously.

"T-there was an undead knight in Durlag's Tower," Aerie shudders. "He…" She looks at Nalia for support; then, finishes lamely, herself. "H-he killed Patrick."

Sarevok frowns, remembering. "Her husband."

"Y-yes," the pretty blonde with his eagle's feather in her hair nods seriously; then, she starts. "What is that?"

There is a ruckus, beyond the hut, on the main square of the village, where its inhabitants, who have left the party alone, usually gather; but Sarevok already knows the answer to Aerie's question.

_**They are coming, master, **_Altair told him almost as soon as he released her.

---

Ogres, orcs, minotaurs and gnolls; some twenty of them, almost as many as there are villagers in Imnesvale, led by Mazzy, and Kriemhild, and Minister Lloyd, and a giant ogre mage, green-skinned, black-eyed, and taller than Sarevok by two human heads: they are all armed, with clubs, maces, halberds and swords, and there is a sudden silence of apprehension as the villagers gather around them and eye them suspiciously. Sarevok, briefly, smiles.

"She wouldn't…" Nalia starts and falls silent.

"She would," Sarevok replies: this is what he would have done, and doubly so since he heard that the ogres were comparatively peaceful: attempt to recruit them. That his would-be wolf fodder marches as a squadron is even better news.

He has just caught his wife's gaze: Kriemhild is proud of herself, like a peacock, and, smiling in appreciation at her, he decides that— "She has a reason to," Imoen says quietly, intercepting his look. "There are orc males there, after all." Nalia raises a carefully tended eyebrow; and then, as she realises that it is of Kriemhild Anchev, not Mazzy Fentan, that the siblings speak, a brief, quickly stifled, grimace of distaste crosses her aristocratic face.

"T-they will defend the village when we go?" Aerie suddenly guesses. "Boo says that my witch is right," Minsc replies. "Mazzy leads living gnolls to the village, not drags their heads to stick them on stakes, where gnoll heads belong." He sighs and shakes his head. "What to think? I don't know. Mazzy is a hero, almost as smart as Boo, and Boo is never wrong. But gnolls killed my Dynaheir, and Minsc does not forget!"

He is clearly troubled; he is not the only one. "Monsters," someone in the peasants' crowd mutters. "Monsters," someone else repeats. "Why bring them here? My sons are here! And my daughter is already dead!" Johanna adds— But Mazzy, Lloyd, Kriemhild and the ogre mage already halt by the well in the centre of the village; and Minister Lloyd begins a speech.

"People o' Imnesvale! This 'ere Madulf—" A curt nod on the ogre mage's side: he must have spent time with humans— "'e asks to protect you. 'is folks are innocent in this business—" "Tol' you. The Witch," Vincenzo mutters. "The Witch!" "—an' are dyin' 'emselves, an' 'e wants to trade an' e'en stay 'ere when the adventurers go solve the crisis. For common safety o' all, 'e says…"

It is not the best speech Sarevok has ever heard; it meanders here and forth, repeats itself and reiterates itself, and is full of blunders of speech and thought. Minister Lloyd would not have convinced anyone to start a scrap, much less start a war. But later, Mazzy Fentan assures the people of Imnesvale in her curt, clipped speech:

"Minister Lloyd is not mistaken about Madulf's innocence and goodwill. My party knows what the reason of the disappearances is, and will set out to deal with it forthwith. Please stay calm, good people of Imnesvale. Soon, your trouble will be over!

As a proof of his good intentions, Madulf expressed the willingness to continue training you in the arts of defence in our absence—"

Madulf speaks, in a tongue no worse than Kriemhild's; Sarevok watches his wife's hideous, proud, though still seeking his approval, face, with unabated cheer. Reinforcements have arrived; the idle wait is over; the party, assured of their hosts' security, will take the fight to the enemy. They leave the horses to the tender care of Willet Vincenzo's stable boy; and then, at last, they move.

---

Through the dark, shady forest, they move: led by their wolf guide, Anath, a multicolour snake of heads: five females', each one its own distinct colours, from Aerie's light, fluffy blond to Kriemhild's coarsest black; and, towering over the capricious, laughing, dangerous flock, the two tall, bald, unlike men. The seven Fentan Knights.

They move: making small, witty banter, teasing each other and the next man's hamster, a-speak; constantly on edge and prepared for fight, for the shadows lengthen, though it is early afternoon still. Sarevok recalls Altair to the hand; Imoen sets Pangur on the shoulder; they move.

Darkness falls; the air is stiff and stale and cold, and the land is hostile and lifeless. Conjured lights light the path no further than several steps forth; these who should see in the darkness do not; nothing remains to be seen. All wit has withered; all repartee expired; the merry flock flocks together, and the last pretence of light-hearted flippancy is lost; weapons are now drawn and magic is now bare—

The shadows attack.


	35. V: Queenside Castling, 6

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**6**

"_Oloth plynn dos, _Irenicus! You promised that there would be no delay!"

The dark face on the other side of the mirror would be beautiful, were it not currently twisted into an unpleasant snarl; the blue-eyed wizard holds its gaze easily. "Be patient, Matron Mother Ardulace. All our plans will come to fruition in the proper time. Now, let us discuss the deployment of the troops again—"

---

_Oloth plynn dos._ Darkness take you. The shades attack.

Anath, the wolf guide, is dead, torn into shreds by her former pack; the party is now a ring of four fighters, Minsc, to his right Mazzy, to her right Sarevok, to his right Kriemhild, with her bone club, the femur of an olden orc shaman who promised to avenge his family, who had fallen to the undead: two long weapons, two short, all chasing the shadows flickering on the fringes of the circle lit by the conjured lights.

Inside the ring of fighters, two familiars and three spell-casters: Aerie, pleading to Baervan Wildwanderer to enhance the concert of the fighters' efforts; Nalia and Imoen throwing flame arrows, Melf's meteors and magic missiles through the gaps over and under the fighters' shoulders.

"It's not working!" Imoen yells over the snarling of the shadow wolves, the sounds of weapons tearing through the curtains of ethereal bodies, the occasional sizzle of magic, the sudden feel of harmony: for each shadow felled, another appears, stealthily, from the silence of the oily darkness beyond, shrieking as it strikes forth and reveals its presence.

"Wait! I have an idea," Nalia replies; and soon, as Aerie begins an elven chant, they start casting spells of protection against fire.

To Sarevok, fighting on the fringes of the ring, in the shadow, all this is secondary; all that counts is the pure exhilaration of the effort, of kill, of murder, the summary attention, the presence of the mind demanded from the successful fighter, the here-and-now, the moment; perfection. A wolf leaps at his throat, and encounters the Edge of Chaos in its path; another strikes low, and Kriemhild crushes what little material there remains of its skull; a third attacks Mazzy, and does not reach her, because Sarevok reaches it first—

"RRAAAGH!" the barbarian yells; Kriemhild snarls an orc curse in accord. "For Arvoreen!" Mazzy Fentan adds; and Sarevok laughs, happily, in a long, low, menacing laughter, as he tears through yet another wolf of shadow; or, possibly, two. It is hard to tell. No one is keeping count.

But the fighters' efforts are, ultimately, futile; and then, at last, Nalia and Imoen finish their casting.

Two rings of sunfire roar in chorus through the shadow, taking with them the shades; and, for a moment, everything is suddenly cold, silent and dead again. This will not last long.

There is something in the distance.

"The proverbial light in the darkness," Sarevok comments.

"I vote we go for it," Nalia replies. "We are lost anyway."

"I agree. Dark is good for sneaking up on evil. But light there must be to avoid stepping into it!" Minsc nods; then, looking at Kriemhild, he adds, with profound contemplation, "Boo says that the lady warrior has healthy lungs. Your roar was almost worthy of a berserker of the Ice Dragon Lodge!"

It is fortunate that Kriemhild's dominion of the common tongue is still limited, he thinks, without mirth.

---

Holding onto each other, watching closely where they step, lest they step into a trap, they move through the quivering, oppressive shadows towards the small, yellow light. Soon, the shadows of trees cede pass, and the gravel of the still path under the party's feet gives way to stone slabs, shattered and broken; there should be plants growing in the cracks, but they have withered without the light and within the shadow which seeps out life. There are the shadows of columns, fountains and pilasters all around them— It is deathly cold.

_**All is shadow; stalk the heart of shadow**_

_**All flows; with time, be healed and be destroyed…**_

This is a druid funeral chant, Altair, he thinks, surprised. How do you know it?

_**You heard it on Faldorn's grave, master, **_the eagle replies. The small yellow light has grown, and now it resolves into the figure of a man, yellow, brilliant, glimmering and gaunt; he is old, tired and bent in half under the weight of his years and his beard. And there is power about him; or the vestiges of power.

"You come," he wheezes. "At last, you come. Come closer. I cannot see you."

"Be you the Shade Lord?" Mazzy Fentan asks, though more of formality rather than genuine conviction.

"He is a god, Fentan," Sarevok replies: the aftertaste of might around the avatar is dreadfully strong— "Or he used to be a god, Mazzy," Imoen corrects suddenly.

"A god?" Mazzy asks. "An avatar?" Nalia corrects. "Used to be?" Aerie, having accepted the previous two fairly easily, finishes. "Yes," Sarevok replies, unable to tear his eyes off the yellow spectre. "He is only a ghost of his former power now."

The old man, yellow, brilliant and wasted, looks up to him, eye into eye. "Ah," he wheezes, in a leaden voice heavy with the worry of ages, "The Child. The next one. The contender. Sun gods are always in demand, lad," he cackles.

"I think that Lathander might have something to say about it," Imoen mutters; but Sarevok feels that he must catch the moment before it passes, that there is something important in it. "And my sister?" he asks forcibly. "A moon goddess? A huntress? A Mielikki? A human Sehanine Moonbow?"

"Siblings," the dead god cackles, "have a powerful pull over human imagination, lad…" And the moment is lost; for the avatar says, suddenly, "The stone. Give it to me."

"The stone?"

"I-I think, Sarevok, that he might mean the stone f-from the village," Aerie says, and Mazzy Fentan looks at them both, frowning.

"Give it to me, lad," the avatar urges. "You are too weak still, and I have been too weak for centuries already, but you will not do what you must do without it."

"What must he do?" Mazzy and Nalia ask suspiciously at the same time as Sarevok demands, frostily, "What must I do, god?"

"Butt-kicking time! The wolves are coming back!" the Rashemi, terribly jarring, interferes as Kriemhild snarls and raises her club and her dragon shield to defend herself; "Give it to me, lad," the avatar of the nameless, forgotten god repeats hungrily.

Sarevok, reluctantly, pulls out his sunstone; in the distance, there is a howl: another flight of the shadow wolves is, indeed, gathering. He hands over the stone; there is a brief flash of yellow light. "Cleanse the altar, Child," the avatar whispers sadly, "Give me my children back, that I may give them peace;" and he is gone; and the stone shines brightly, piercing through the shadows and repelling the shades.

---

"A god," Mazzy Fentan, with her sword and her bow which are both Arvoreen's gifts, tells him in her grim, unsmiling manner, "Do dead gods talk to you often, Anchev?"

"Every night," he replies, truthfully, because he discovered that, as with a great lot of other people, truth is a good tactic where Mazzy Fentan is concerned; it confuses her, at times— In the background, Imoen snorts.

The party is now gathered on top of a flight of stairs, in the portico before the temple's massive portal; the front courtyard, now full of howling wolf shades, lies beneath and behind them. The sunstone in his hand, however brightly shining, turns darkness into bleakness only some thirty steps in each direction, and the spot of light is smaller yet, ten steps at most: Mazzy ordered that none stray from it, not even Imoen, to scout.

He looks down on the halfling. "Fentan, whatever you might think, this is not a common occurrence in my life, either. But think of it. The Rashemi—" Minsc, miraculously, turns towards him from where he is inspecting Kriemhild's dragon helm; Sarevok feels a passing jolt of possessive anger— "He dreamt of that spirit of his—"

"Mairyn," Minsc interrupts him. "You speak of Mairyn. Boo says: Speak of the forest with more respect!"

"Mairyn," Sarevok nods, ignoring the admonition, "He is from some nature-worshipping tribe, is he not? He is familiar with nature, and that is why he saw its spirit, while none of us did," he finishes smugly: the meeting unsettled him more than he would care to admit; he thought he had grown used to speaking with dead gods— "It may be that the avatar simply could speak to me, and not to you, for instance."

"Because our perception associated you two?" Imoen interjects, and he looks at the little sister; where did she learn words like these? When? "Yes, sister," he replies, with a shrug; looking around the assembled faces, he finishes, desperately, "I believe that we should concentrate on what the god said, instead."

"He wants us to cleanse an altar," Mazzy says, suspicious and unconvinced by his weak argument. "His altar?"

"Corthala's note said that the area was sealed off after some kind of ritual. A sacrilege, perhaps?" Nalia adds, with lips squeezed in thought.

"I-I wonder where he is now," Aerie muses as Imoen says, "Those children of his he mentioned…"

Mutual lack of understanding follows; meanwhile, Sarevok considers, "Perhaps the temple was sealed with some worshippers still inside. And if the original…" A nod to Nalia, "sacrilege was never atoned for—" He shrugs, again, with sudden irritation. "Conjecture. All conjecture. Let's move on," he says; and then, belatedly, remembers that he is neither the first nor the second in command here. "Lady Fentan?"

The halfling is furious, though she hides it well. "Yes," she says, "Anchev is right. Let us set forth."

---

He must speak to his wife; or, better said, not must, for, hand-picked, intelligent, dangerous and forcibly loyal, she follows him silently and unquestioningly, though she does question others, and in the human tongue. But he has, perhaps, neglected her; and Minsc—Minsc who roars and bellows, and walks clad in armour made of a bear hide, and, for all his hamsters, has no refinement— Minsc is a cretin. And, though Sarevok has planned to release the half-orc since she murdered for him and survived the deed, Kriemhild is, in the end, his wife. His _halarn_.

_Halarn_: bondswoman, the one to whom you have the right, he recalls absently as they walk, before shedding his thoughts: they have entered the maze which remains of the old temple.

It would not be a maze, perhaps, save for the overwhelming darkness— There are crumbling walls; crumbling ceilings, sometimes open to the sky. There are bones and there is gravel crunching under the party's feet, and the still coldness of the grave in the dry, sterile air. Loss.

Loss: there are paintings on the walls, of the sun and of darkness, the sun falling to the darkness; paintings, and statues, and books of delicate parchment, some lying open on the ground, as if those carrying them had simply dropped them, centuries ago. He picks up one; it is illegible to him. Then, under his touch, it crumbles.

Shadows flicker; Imoen, with her cat firmly on her shoulder, shoots out a fire arrow; Aerie is constantly murmuring to her gods, in one tongue, in the next, in the other, a litany of jumbled words in three languages, asking, pleading, begging to protect the party from the undead; steps resound in a multitude of harmonics and echoes. The party move; constantly keeping to that same instinctive formation, the fighters outside, the wizards inside, never spreading far away from the light of the sunstone, now carried by Aerie.

The Shade Lord, whatever he is, must know that the party are here, Sarevok thinks, listening to the steady beating of his eagle's heart. He must. Is it the power of the light within the sunstone that is keeping him away? The temple, he thinks coolly, is enormous. It is not his fear, for he sees no reason to be afraid; not perception affecting his reality: he has counted his steps— Though, perhaps, that is part of the game; as is their perceived safety. It is an interesting issue. And the bloodlessness of the kidnappings proves that the Shade Lord enjoys playing with one's mind.

Skeletons rise around the party, silently; large, armed skeletons of those who must have once been the temple guardians— Kriemhild yells out an orc battle cry, and that breaks the spell. They fight.

---

They come to the dead end of the marble corridor. There is a hole in the ground, and there is a steel grate and a lock in it, still strong in the air which harbours no rust.

"Solitary confinement, for the heretics, in the darkness," Sarevok decides: the god they met had been, after all, a sun god. There are rails over the hole: the faithful would have pulled the nearby statue over the condemned to leave them without light— "An oubliette," he adds, remembering his impression of the Trademeet city prison.

"Boo wants to know what an oubliette is," Minsc volunteers, and Sarevok frowns. The hamster has never expressed an interest in factual knowledge before.

"It is a place where people are put to be forgotten about, Minsc," Nalia supplies. "In the Hold, we…" She falls silent, suddenly; realising perhaps that it is an inglorious fact from her family's history which she is about to reveal.

"We go in?" Kriemhild asks in the silence, finally, looking now at Sarevok, now at Mazzy.

Mazzy thinks. "We have the key." With her foot, she moves delicately one of the skeletons they have just destroyed; there is a key there, in the pieces of its armour and the tattered folds of its robe. "And, since we are here, why not? I'll lead. Anchev, Minsc, Aerie, you'd better stay up." She hesitates for a moment, before adding, "You too, Nalia."

Nalia narrows her eyes, and starts to reply something, angrily, before reconsidering; Imoen folds her cloak, kneels by the grate, and begins to drop some oil into the lock. Then, Mazzy, together with the shorter wizard of the two, the shortest fighter bar herself, and the wizard's cat, descends into the dark pit.

As she does, Nalia takes the sunstone from Aerie and puts it, carefully, on the edge of the pit; and there are heavy steps from the corridor down which the party has just come.

"Three or four," Sarevok comments; moving, together with the barbarian, to the fore. Nalia sighs. "At that speed, I'll use up all my magic before we reach that Shade Lord," she says. Aerie laughs, before, Altair tells him, she starts to plead to the Forest Gnome to make her skin tough as bark.

What emerges from the darkness are two skeletons of warriors, armed with long, heavy swords; then, one further, with a bow. And also, behind them, a giant, ill-defined mass of fused ivory with scythe-like arms; not at all a skeleton, and completely inhuman.

"It's a bone golem, I think," Nalia says, impressed. "I've never seen one, but I read descriptions—"

"Later, duchess, with pleasure," he replies, pleasantly, eyeing his opponents, satisfied that he thought to protect himself against enchanted weapons. The skeleton archer shoots, at Minsc, but the arrow does not pierce the barbarian's thick hide armour. Instead, it enrages him.

"ARRGH!" Minsc cries. "Minsc is no pincushion! And nor is Boo!"

And the wild, joyful spectacle of fighting begins again.

Out.

---

_**Master?!**_

Out of my way.

The coldness of the gelid arrow starts to spread through the biceps of his right arm; he snarls, raises the stone skin again; right on time. One of the scythe arms of the bone golem lands on the left shoulder and momentarily stays there, unable to cut through the spell—

Minsc takes a massive swipe; the arm falls to the ground. "Ooh, that was smart!" Minsc laughs in his thick Rashemi accent. He is bleeding from two or three cuts, and there are two arrows sticking out of his flesh, too.

Another arrow, at Nalia; shot true, by it passes by Nalia nonetheless: Nalia is wearing her Trademeet-woven short azure cape, and, in it, after all, one never knows where or who Nalia is: her image is blurred, distorted and shifting randomly. The arrow flies on; hits Aerie's winged armour of Aerdrie Faenya's faith; disappears— Aerie is pleading for some yet other favour; Nalia has stopped her spell-casting: her magic proved useless against the fused, hardened mass of bone; instead, she is shooting arrows herself, from a small bow, taking her time to try and find the weak points in the ivory—

Sarevok takes another swing, and hacks at the bone golem with the entire humanly might he possesses, at the opening left by the barbarian's edge; at last, as another frigid arrow rebounds from his stone skin, as the supporting, comforting power of the Crying God heals him, and Minsc, and Altair, who was caught in passing by the scythe's very edge—

—cracks begin to show in the bone, and the Edge of Chaos penetrates deeply, and the golem splits in two, and falls down, and Minsc hacks off its other arm; and, at last, the golem is still. The archer skeleton is easy to dispose of, now.

"At last," Imoen says from inside the hole, in a bored tone underscored with a fair amount of fear and apprehension. "Help me out, little brother. Quickly."

That he does, as Aerie and Nalia start to Minsc and start pulling out the arrows and, in Aerie's case, murmuring another Ilmatari prayer. Still bleeding, with the arrow spreading its frost through his blood, he reaches into the pit, and helps Imoen and Pangur out; and then, Mazzy Fentan. The one next up should be Kriemhild; instead, his wife passes to him the body of a man.

"He's alive," Imoen says to his inquiring look as Mazzy orders, in the background, "Aerie! Leave Minsc and come here!"

Sarevok helps his wife out, and, as Nalia finally pulls out the two arrows from Minsc's flesh, and Imoen the one in Sarevok's shoulder, and as the two men drink healing potions—Aerie says, "W-we need a fire. He is chilled, a-and the shadows touched him. I-I can try to heal him—"

"Minsc knows that my witch can heal the stranger!" the Rashemi roars, and finds himself at the receiving end of Mazzy Fentan's unsmiling look. "We know it, too, Minsc," she says. "Be silent. Aerie? What else do we need?"

Minsc's face droops; Nalia and Imoen are already gathering books and pulling out wood blocks from Sarevok's bag of holding. The elf considers. "Nothing. O-only time?"

"How long?"

Aerie shrugs and shakes her vixen-like head. "I-I don't know. He's been here very long…"

The fire is soon lit, and they put the man's body beside it on and under two pieces of thick cloth. Aerie sits by the unconscious man, and starts upon another prayer to Ilmater, this time asking her god to save him from the brink of exhaustion. The rest of the party gather as far away as possible from her, within the limits of the sunstone's shining, to let her work in undisturbed peace.

"Well," Mazzy Fentan says, "Whether he is Valygar Corthala or not, perhaps he will have something to tell us."

"For example, why he is still alive," Imoen mutters; "Yes," Nalia replies, frowning, "I've wondered that, myself…"

They wait.

---

He had only a glimpse of the man when Kriemhild passed the unconscious body to him, and that, if the villagers be believed, would mean that that there is, indeed, Valygar Corthala: tall, and dark—dark-skinned, even, as though he came from somewhere in the south, even though Nalia told Imoen and him that there once existed Corthalas of Amn—

Tall, dark, handsome, dressed in fine, though rather worn armour, with a katana at his side and the calluses of constant martial exercise on his hands: an interesting man, and he has not even spoken yet, save in writing. Sarevok takes the lacquered _saya _lying on the temple floor, and tries to pull the sword out of it, carefully, with proper respect; the way an enchanted katana, possessed of its own spirit, ought to be unsheathed. It will not budge. Interesting.

"It will not leave the sheath for anyone but its owner," Mazzy Fentan, watching his actions curiously, remarks.

"I know, halfling," he replies. Around them, Aerie is still sitting by the unconscious man; Nalia and Imoen have withdrawn to as remote as possible a corner of their own, and are sharing little laughs, touches and battle strategies. Minsc is feeding Boo, Altair and Pangur are watching the hamster intently, and Kriemhild's attention is divided between Minsc and him. "What do you think about what happened earlier?" he asks. "About our divine caller?"

Mazzy is quite surprised, and equally suspicious. "Why do you ask?"

"I am curious. Imoen is busy. And you have given me no reason to disrespect your opinion, Fentan," he replies lightly, putting the sheath and the sheathed sword away, next to the man's long bow.

"I am flattered," she says curtly, because she is not. "I wonder if this meeting taught you anything. For example, that even gods die, Anchev."

"So they do. If they lose their believers," he replies. That is why, perhaps, it is so important that the siblings be exterminated efficiently, and without error: the issue has to do with the power of human belief; with retaining the belief and the power after the ascension, very easy to achieve after a memorable war and a bloodbath, far less so without it— How can one believe in a god of murder who has failed to assassinate his own blood kin? "Or if they are killed, like my father. But, ordinarily, it is more difficult to kill a god than to kill a halfling."

"You are right. My life will be shorter than yours, if you ever manage to— to fulfil that vile plan," Mazzy says, and her hand twitches as she must rethink whether not to attack him now, before he begins to turn his words into actions, again. "But it will be a much better life than yours," she adds with stubborn conviction. "My good deeds—"

He must laugh. "Your good deeds will have no lasting consequences, Fentan. They will be gone with the people on whom you bestowed them. One war, one uprising—or one change of generations—and it will be gone. All gone. All forgotten."

"They will last long enough!" Mazzy Fentan snaps suddenly. Then, she shakes her head, "You bought that thing, from that farmer," she points at the sunstone glowing on the floor; and suddenly, he has found proof that Mazzy Fentan does follow his exploits as he is with her party; not that he expected otherwise. "I don't know why you did that, but you made him happy," she argues, "And that should be enough. A good deed is its own reward!" she finishes fervently, with all the irritating conviction of a missionary and a zealot.

There is a silence; then, placidly, "Indeed. We have light," he remarks, for he finds the coincidence between the god's appearance and the stone's rather convenient; but Mazzy offers no insight. "We are still alive," she retorts instead with the bitter, grim self-reproach of one berating self for not having realised beforehand something which beforehand realised could not be; and so, he asks, "Have I proven sufficiently that I am not planning to override your command, halfling?"

Mazzy, predictably, looks at him with sheer disbelief. "Is everything for you about power, Anchev?"

He smiles, and strikes back, "Yes. But, my lady Fentan, you, too, want more of life than simply benevolent deeds; buying stones from farmers. You are a," a proper tinge of irony, "valiant servant of goodness, after all. I heard your sister speak of you—"

Suddenly, Mazzy is furious, again. "You spoke to my sister? Of course you would."

"—when she spoke with my sister about employment with you," he finishes calmly, and Mazzy deflates. "Pala… is a very traditional halfling," she says.

"Yes," he agrees. "I have no reason to respect her opinion."

Mazzy eyes him darkly for a moment. "This is none of your business, Anchev," she suddenly concludes. "And Pala is a much… much more precious person than you are. You have no right to pass judgment on her." Then, she gets to her feet and, hostile, walks away.

---

The elf gets to her feet and exchanges small words with Mazzy; Mazzy takes her place by the fire and the sleeping, recovering man; Aerie lays herself to sleep.

In the background, Nalia and Imoen grow, suddenly, much quieter, whispering instead of laughing to avoid disturbing their friend's reverie; in the end, they, too, must fall asleep in the deathly cold; certainly so do, by the fire, the familiars, perhaps tired of following the hamster.

Boo's human has been whispering loudly to Sarevok's wife, "Soon, my dajemma will end! Then, all honour and glory will be Minsc and Boo's, and the disgrace of Dynaheir's death will be forgotten, though her name most certainly will be not! But now, I must protect my witch."

"Aerie is weak," Kriemhild has replied, with all the contempt of bitter envy.

"I agree. That is why I must protect her!" Minsc is now saying. "The warrior lady is strong, and needs no protection! But, Boo says to tell you, if Kriemhild ever needs help in kicking some b-behinds, you know where Minsc is! Minsc and Boo will do all they can do to help," he flashes a large smile and looks at the half-orc with a dog's faithful eyes.

Kriemhild, meanwhile, catches Sarevok's own amused gaze, and tells Minsc, "I must am going. The husband is needing me," she adds; there is some apparent confusion about the modes, though, equally apparently, the existence of progression has been discovered.

Minsc sighs sadly in the background; Kriemhild almost does not pay attention to him as she hurries to her husband.

"What happened earlier, with the ogres?" that one asks her, in her first tongue, because she begged to be excused, but she could not formulate her thoughts properly in the human one—

A brief trace of sheer horror. "This one begs to be excused, esteemed husband, but the husband," further fear, confusion and anger, "obeys the gnat—the halfling." She uses the human word, eventually.

"Yes," he confirms for her sake, "The halfling must be obeyed. You did fine. What happened?"

A long tale follows, about how Mazzy Fentan and Kriemhild entered the ogres' forest camp. The halfling demanded to be brought before Madulf; the halfling spoke to Madulf. "What did Fentan say?" curious, he interrupts.

Kriemhild considers for a moment, and, eventually, admits reluctantly, "This is the nature of war. By protecting others, you save yourselves." Sarevok smiles, briefly.

"Then, the halfling and this one fetched the ruler of the Imnesvale weakskin clan, and ceasefire was discussed," Kriemhild finishes. "_Tzerr'an halarn_?" he asks, "You, wife?"

"This one disciplined." She probably broke a skull or two, he does not smile. "And," another brief moment of badly hidden anger, "complied with the gnat's wish, and assisted in translation."

"Fine," he assures again the hunched, tusked, lupine-eared figure. "What— How—" He finds himself at a loss of words: there are ideas which are hard to translate into orc. "This horde? What are the thoughts?"

Kriemhild's black eyes glitter maliciously as she lies to him, exaggerating her contempt and odium for her husband's sake, "These… are women. Enemy," she adds, and she must have Aerie in mind: the word for 'elf' and 'enemy' is the same in orc. "Unwise warrior," she finishes, in the circumspect language of an orc female speaking of an orc male—

"This one will follow the husband," she ends, hiding her discontent at him and at his weakness; the hierarchy of her world is upset, and he will not be strong for her, that she may be a slave, but a slave to a powerful man. She is not at peace; and she can neither advise nor criticise; and he has put her in a very delicate position by bidding both— She is seething.

He smiles, briefly, again; and orders, "Sleep, my wife."

Then, as, wrapped in her scarlet dragon cloak, she sets herself to fulfilling the order, and he is left to himself, and he takes another long look around the impromptu camp: at animals and at people, asleep, coupled or alone; at Mazzy Fentan, who has turned her back on him as she watches over the sick man; at the cold, bleak feel of loss and loneliness— Then, for a passing moment, he wishes he had a sparring partner with him; but soon, he smirks, and opens his diaries and his spell-book instead. The mien will not affect him. It has been his own choice which brought him here; here, as—save to Irenicus—everywhere.

They wait.


	36. V: Queenside Castling, 7

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**7**

"Ow! Imoen, wh—"

A contingency stone skin fires off, and Sarevok starts: in the spot which his sister shares with her girlfriend, as remote from the rest of the party as it is possible within the close quarters which the eight people and the three animals must share— They are fighting, those two; and Nalia is fighting for her life. The last illusion of intimacy, carefully established through mutual, benevolent deception, must shatter.

He finds it difficult to restrain his sister; she is strong, purposeful and cunning, and easily sliding out of his grasp, like a young cat cornered by a hunter; and has reached deep into her taint, and is cold like a shard of ice. Showered in blood, she almost burns him when he touches her.

He carries her to the fire, acting more on blind, animal instinct than on any conscious knowledge: Imoen is cold. She must be warmed.

---

Imoen is cuddled next to him, with her head bowed and her familiar in her lap. ("I believe that my sister and I would benefit from a moment of privacy," he snarled at a halfling, shattering another illusion.) He lifts his sister's chin to look at her; she looks terrible, brown-haired and brown-eyed and scarred and little and sad; she looked into Nalia's face when she finally became half-human again, and said, in a small voice, "I'm sorry, Nalia." "It's all right," Nalia replied. "But this is something I must talk about with my brother," Imoen finished desperately. "I really do."

"We fight, little brother," she is telling him now, in the yellow light which is the party's only defence against the gloom, the depression, and the creeping shadows of negative energy; not any decent shadows in which a decent thief can decently hide, Imoen complained before— "There is Pangur, and there is Irene, and we try to escape, and we try to fight—"

"The dwarf fights on your side?" he asks, sincerely surprised; Imoen, equally surprised, answers matter-of-factly, "Yes. Didn't I tell you this before, brother? She does." She makes a small mouth, before adding, more cheerfully, "I think that she likes you, now, you know. Or, at least, she forgives you, as long as you are a good brother to me— She fights against you, doesn't she?" she now asks in turn, as in turn she must see his face. "She's not free in your place… Well, that's the truth," she asserts, forcibly, earnestly. "She doesn't hate you, now. Whatever she's telling you."

The other truth is that he does not care. "I cannot aid you, sister," he repeats; then, amused, adds, "But, I believe, Father is worried about you. He wished to make amends with me on your account."

Imoen lifts her head higher. "Oh? He did? So what you're saying is that he's afraid more of me than you now, brother?" she asks, trying for playfulness and hitting him low. "Perhaps," he replies, brotherly pretending a lack of concern—or is it: pretending a lack of brotherly concern? And then, because he has spoken his part, he adds, before he is dismissed, "I think that you should speak to Nalia, sister."

Nalia, Duchess d'Arnise, wizard, attractive redhead, his sister's woman, is sitting glumly amidst the silence of two other women and a man with a hamster; Sarevok, with Altair on the hand, tells her, "She would speak with you, duchess."

_**He is stirring, master.**_

"And the man is waking up, I believe," Sarevok adds smugly for Mazzy Fentan's benefit. The halfling attempts to be adamantly unimpressed by his ability to see behind his back.

---

The man is still tall, dark and handsome; but, unfortunately, he opened his mouth.

"What's this? Some kind of trick?"

"We are real, I assure you, my good man," Mazzy Fentan replies, giving him water. She is standing in front of the man, with her left hand, as usual, tapping the hilt of her sword; he, now sitting, pointing at each of her squatting company in turn, accuses with heavy, deep suspicion, "Real? Then how do you explain _this_? This is an orc. And this? Hamster. And," the condemning finger shifts to Sarevok, "his eyes are _glowing_."

"Orc?! Kriemhild is no orc!" Minsc bridles up; Sarevok eyes calmly the finger, hovering far too close to his chest to his liking, and adds, "The Rashemi is right. You will apologise to my wife, once you are lucid and properly aware of your transgression. With your permission, Fentan," he nods, flawlessly, to Mazzy, as he returns to his feet.

"Fentan? You are Mazzy Fentan?" he hears then, and halts; the stranger is looking at the halfling, who is looking at him, and— A fairly long moment passes before the stranger shakes his head. "Excuse me," he says, in a changed tone. "Where are my manners? I'm Valygar. Valygar Corthala."

"We found your note," Mazzy Fentan answers, without taking her eyes off the man; and, then, suddenly, there is the impression that some small part of the world which, for a moment, ran on its own time, is now speeding up to join with the rest, as Valygar Corthala repeats, slowly, "My note;" then, asks, "Did you bring priests?"

"We have a priest," Mazzy replies, mildly surprised at the urgency in the man's voice.

"The Shade Lord—" Corthala looks around the four assembled faces.

"He is the source of Imnesvale's problems. We know," Mazzy assures him.

"—He possesses the bodies of those he kidnaps," the man on the ground speaks hurriedly. "He uses them as conduits, as containers for his power. Their souls become wraiths, to be bidden at his command, and he raises the skeletons —"

"Slow down, good man Valygar!" Mazzy tries to intervene; but the man interrupts, "I was to be his next vessel. But you—you have brought him even more fodder!"

"The stone gives us light," Kriemhild says, slowly, "We are—" A desperate obsidian look. "Safe?" she hazards.

"Safe," Mazzy nods. "Protected." The man is watching Kriemhild curiously. "I see I will have to apologise again," he mutters to himself.

"Yes," Minsc threatens, "Minsc and Boo will check that you do that!" Sarevok adds, cheerfully, with barely a warning undertone, "I knew that you would be made to see reason, Corthala."

Mazzy smiles. "In that case, how about a round of proper introductions?"

In the background, Sarevok's sister and her lover are kissing.

---

"I saw him in Merella's body," Valygar now says, as introductions have been made and the party are seated together near the fire; and as, voraciously, he eats and drinks. "He takes the bodies to establish a link and stay—" He shrugs and looks around the bleak room. "Here."

"On the Prime Material Plane," Nalia supplies.

Corthala nods. "But because he is undead, a shadow—" Another shrug, with a look in Nalia's direction; "From the Plane of Negative Energy," this time, Imoen finishes.

"Yes, that," Valygar continues, with private distaste, "He exhausts the bodies of his hosts. The more power he uses here, the quicker he wastes his vessel." He looks around the gathered faces. "He brought a dragon."

"A dragon?" Mazzy asks; not alarmed, much.

"A dragon," Valygar nods. "I heard it just before I was captured." He takes a swig of water and wipes his mouth. "I also didn't see anyone else alive here. Make your own guess where they went. Filthy magic," he mutters. "Filthy, undead, magic."

He looks up, abruptly. "Which one of you is the priest?"

"I-I am," Aerie replies timidly. Her hair is still tousled after her sleep; the man eyes her critically. "Well, since you just saved my life, I can't deny that you have power," he mutters, but is clearly discontent by the elf's slight, and pregnant, appearance.

"You might thank her, you know," Nalia glares at the man.

"I-it is not necessary, Nalia," Aerie scowls.

"How come it isn't necessary?" Nalia bristles. "You did just save his life."

"He may save hers tomorrow," Mazzy intervenes curtly, ending the incipient quarrel. Then, she looks at the gobbling man again. "You will fight with us, good man Valygar?"

He swallows, and nods. "If I have my sword, yes."

"Fine," Mazzy nods in approval. Then, she looks around the party. "I think that, since we are in a dead end, we will have to retrace our steps until we find another corridor… Back to the entrance of the temple, if I remember correctly," she sighs.

Minsc stirs. "An evil dragon!" he announces happily, "Now isn't this great, Boo?! To slay it will be so mighty a deed that bards will sing of the glory of Minsc and Boo and friends for ages to come! Aah—"

"Big," Kriemhild grunts with laconic pessimism. "Dragon is big. Hot. Loud… Hard for kill," she adds after a moment's contemplation. "It is not great. Not before kill."

---

From the entrance of the temple, they enter the opposite passage; the left-hand, winding walkway, which takes them again into collapsed halls filled with sterile darkness; with echoes, debris and rubble, and paintings and statues, of sun and darkness; the sun is now winning over the darkness under the high ceiling of the cold colonnade—

Skeletons and another bone golem attack them from a niche, from surprise; Corthala fights well, though he would fight better with a second sword. The party move on through the dead temple; shadows flicker and amass around them.

"You say, Valygar, that the shadows here are the souls of the villagers?" Imoen asks. "And the original worshippers, I guess?"

"Yes," the man nods. "I saw the Shade Lord pass from some woman's body into," a brief hesitation, followed by an angry, "Merella's."

"That would explain the god's demand, brother," his sister looks at Sarevok coolly.

"Yes, sister," replies he, absently, adjusting his Shadow's graphite cloak— "And if the undead takes over the bodies of his victims, we now know why the area has been sealed off. To prevent contagion. However. I wonder why the seals have not held."

"I-I think that it's terrible," Aerie pipes up, capturing the siblings' shared attention. "W-we can't fight the shadows i-if they are slaves—"

"We must," Mazzy Fentan interrupts.

---

The shadows dancing on the fringes of the sunstone's spotlight flicker and darken; finally, they resolve into a silent, tightly closed ring of twisted humanoid shapes; a silent ring, and behind the ring, one feels, a silent swarm: dozens, if not hundreds, of shades, filling the corridor side to side, before and behind; cutting off both the way back and the way forth. Tendrils of darkness reach into the speck of daylight, hesitantly, withdrawing quickly; the wraiths hiss and snarl in visceral anger—

"Don't worry, my friends!" Mazzy encourages, and there must be some little Arvoreen's blessing behind the simple words: the party is now once again a purposeful ring of bared weapons and ready magic, waiting for their enemy to come to them, to measure sheer numbers against expertise and skill—

_**Room. Straight ahead, hundred steps.**_

"Doorway. Ahead, hundred steps," Sarevok repeats with sharp, sudden understanding: if there is any symmetry to the temple, the chamber behind the bottleneck is the end of the corridor. And also, since they passed no other on their way here—

"It's a dead end! We'll be trapped there," Nalia objects. "If we manage to bar the door."

Mazzy appraises Sarevok briefly with a look. "We will run for it. Nalia, hasten us. Minsc, you will take Aerie. Aerie?"

Aerie sighs. "Yes, Mazzy."

For a moment—too long a moment—she stands, with her head bowed and her eyes closed, considering; around them, the cold darkness weaves and snarls, by the minute bolder. Then, the elf sighs again, deeply, and begins her prayer.

That is in the elven tongue again, slow and harmonious, and long, and repetitive; Mazzy Fentan shoots the elf a curious, angry look, a look lacking understanding. "Can't she hurry up a bit?" Valygar hisses, eyeing the dark crowd; this is exactly Sarevok's sentiment.

He considers; there is a spell which holds the undead— Imoen looks at Nalia, oddly; the spell Nalia is casting is not the one to haste; Imoen begins to mutter the haste spell herself. Sarevok finds himself casting the necromantic spell, silently, surreptitiously.

When the elf ends her prayer, he lets his spell fall and sputter away: because, once again, Aerie called a divine wind to herself, this time a strong, silent gale which affects only the shadows around the party, not the party itself— Repulsed, repelled, carried off by the storm, the shadows are swept outwards away from the living, are made fall into one another, into the walls, disoriented; Imoen has finished her casting, and the party, bewildered, are hasted.

"Boo says we should hurry up!" Minsc says, suddenly, and picks up the elf.

Kriemhild starts into the breach and for the open door.

---

They run; he grabs a protesting Mazzy Fentan, and they run; Aerdrie Faenya's silent wind accompanies them, tearing the shadows off the ground and off the party's path. Mazzy must look rather ridiculous dangling from his elbow, and weighs, even in her golden armour, almost nothing.

He sets her, indignant, in the chamber at the end of the corridor; puts the stone, now hot and searing, on the floor; takes a quick look around the room; it is a dead end; yet there is no ambush— He bolts, together with Minsc, for the heavy altar; they push it in front of the doorway; Valygar and Kriemhild come to help them; Mazzy mutters a few words; Imoen drinks a potion; they, too, strain; and the statue crashes, loudly.

The divine wind dies out when the dust falls; the wraiths, sneering, hissing, begin to gather their wits and themselves on the other side of the blocked opening; Sarevok is curious whether they have intelligence enough to climb the barricade. He does not think so; he is, apparently, correct.

There is a brief flash of magic, and the shades closest to the party are still.

"Tell me what happened here," Nalia speaks out in clear, loud tones, looking intently at the dim mob behind the mass of wreckage.

"Since when do you dabble in necromancy, Nalia?!" Mazzy, betrayed, accuses; Nalia pays her no heed. "Tell me," she orders forcefully the shadow crowd. "What was the sacrilege?"

There are droplets of sweat on her face, and, under her azure cape, her image jumps wildly in nervous excitement; yet, finally, the creatures obey and hiss, "The blood of Amuana… on the holiest of altarsssssss…"

"Amuana? Who was she?"

"Amuana. The powerful. The new light. The child priestessssss…"

"And she was killed? Where is that altar?"

"Where the Lord isssss…" the wraiths reply; Nalia clenches her fists, looks firmly at the crowd, and, as her image stills, demands, "Who was your god?!"

"The Yell—"

"—llow God. Ama—

"—mauna—"

"—ator—"

"—ator—ator—ator…" the shades struggle and murmur; "Amaunator?!" Nalia demands; "Yessss…" the shades hiss and snarl, and the mental connection is broken; Nalia, pale, releases her breath, takes another, deep one, and lets her eyesight drop.

"Since when do you dabble in necromancy, Nalia?" Mazzy Fentan repeats quietly; on the other side of the barricade, the shadow twists and coils.

"Since after Patrick died," Nalia replies dryly. "And don't start on that 'you're too young and inexperienced' speech, Mazzy," she adds furiously. "I am not as inexperienced as you think. I'm not that young, naive Nalia you found in that tavern, escaping with barely a gold piece to her soul! I have grown up."

"Less than you think," Mazzy replies viciously. "How can you—" She shakes her head; the braided, wiry hair bounces. "Necromancy?" she pleads, almost. "Is that what I taught you? I don't recognise you, Nalia!"

"Wizards," Valygar Corthala mutters angrily. "Meddling with forces they do not understand."

"Get used to it," Nalia rejoins, with a snort, "Both of you." She walks off into a corner; Imoen shoots a meaningful look in her brother's direction: _listen for me, brother_—and, with her cat in tow, leaves to comfort her girlfriend.

He watches; Mazzy blinks; then, her bewildered attention turns to Aerie. "And you, Aerie? Can you explain to me what it was you did? It's not that I'm not happy that you did it, but I would have been grateful for some advance warning!"

Aerie, clearly rather discomfited by the whole scene, stutters, "W-well, I-I thought that i-if the shades a-are slaves, w-we can't—"

"Oh, get over it!" Mazzy snaps; then, immediately, says, "I'm sorry, Aerie— I'm sorry." But Aerie bursts into tears, and starts into a different corner of the chamber.

"I must go comfort my witch," Minsc says, eyeing Mazzy Fentan askew; the halfling, caught in the events, does not say anything, even when Minsc says, "Do you want to go with Minsc and Boo?" and Kriemhild replies, "Yes, I want."

Sarevok finds the sudden outbreak of hysteria almost amusing. It is caused to no small extent by the abundance of the negative energy around the party; like Imoen's depressed dream before— He looks at Mazzy Fentan, looks at Valygar Corthala, and decides that he is the superfluous man between the two remaining in the halfling's cortège.

---

_**Everyone has a shadow.**_

Isn't it a bit too late for the philosophy lesson, Altair?

_**The druids interpret the shadow as the balance between light and darkness. Very little is good or evil, or begets only good or evil. Everything is a shadow. But balance must be still sought.**_

The heart of shadow in the shadow. I know.

_**There is a different interpretation. The shadow is all one fears in oneself. All one hates. All one loathes, all one wants to forget, all one wants to cast away. But a shadow cannot be lost. If one does not accept its existence, one ends up chasing it, or it ends up chasing one, one's entire life.**_

_**There is a story in the Planes about a man who tried to escape his shadow for so long that he built a whole fortress of his regrets…**_

Curious.

_**No thought?**_

I fear nothing, Altair. I can be made to feel fear, but I fear nothing. I know who I am. All the depths… What remains there to be feared, little bard?

_**Halfling.**_

What—?! Oh. "Lady Fentan."

The halfling standing behind him says, stiffly, "Anchev."

There is a perfectly uneasy silence. He lets it last; in the end, Mazzy Fentan sighs. "I have been informed that Imoen and you recently fought a dragon."

"My wife and we did. A living one," he replies, with little surprise.

A twitch crosses Mazzy Fentan's face. "Keep Kriemhild away from Minsc, can you?"

He intends to, but— "Why?"

"Minsc, is simple, not stupid. He is bound to discover at some point how much her outlook on life differs from his. I would prefer to avoid having his feelings hurt." Mazzy is irritated. "But this is not why I came here. I spoke with Valygar, and…" She pauses, then, curtly, "I want you to take over the command during the dragon fight."

Still digesting the issue of the Rashemi, he answers mechanically, "We have to find the dragon first, Fentan. More to the point, I refuse."

Mazzy's face twitches angrily. "Of all the— This is an order."

Valygar Corthala sits gloomily brooding in a corner, watching them askew. He is clearly unhappy with Mazzy's presence here— "A foolish one, halfling. The man is right. You are too ripe for stage fright—"

Mazzy blinks, and, with full awareness of her folly, declares primly, "It is impolite to listen in on other people's conversations, Anchev."

He smirks, and finishes, "—Nevertheless, I do appreciate the compliment."

"Compliment?! Do you really think that this is some kind of a—a whim?!" She looks around; but, save Valygar Corthala, no one is paying attention to her raised voice. "I don't like you—"

—because, relentlessly self-declared good—_valiant_—person, you are afraid that one day, you will turn into me. "I don't like you, either, halfling."

"—but I admit: in four, you managed to kill a dragon— What if someone dies? You care for Imoen—"

"—I am flattered that you should think so, Fentan. I wonder if this will teach you anything—"

"—Is it so difficult to start caring for other people? What if someone dies again because I don't give the right order?"

Her husband died to the undead, yes; yet the question still strikes a false chord; it would be more fitting coming from Nalia, or even, perhaps, Imoen. From Mazzy's lips, it sounds rhetorical at best; as though it had been asked for the express purpose of receiving the answer— He gives it nonetheless. "Then it will be your failure, not mine."

But the small face is still watching him unhappily; "Fentan," he feels compelled to add, "I do not insult your intelligence. Do be so kind as to return the small favour. Few people make a business of taking out their sympathy on strangers, and I have yet to see a reason—"

"What if this is Imoen?"

Assaulted from the flank, he smiles again. "If Imoen dies, so do you. All of you."

The halfling watches him closely. She snorts. "And yet, you refuse."

"I merely agree that it takes supreme folly to replace the commander before a critical confrontation, halfling," lazily, he replies. "However surprised out of your control you may have been by your associates, you are still bound to know their assets better than I do. I— You are too experienced for stage fright, Fentan," he repeats, suddenly irritated. "And you, apparently, _care_."

Mazzy nods slowly; then, with abrupt honesty, she announces, "I cannot let you stay in the party, Anchev. I thought I was strong enough to rein you in. But I am not. You are too used to being in charge. Even if," grudgingly, "you are not doing it on purpose, you end up upstaging me. And this slackens the discipline. And I must have discipline in my company!"

He smiles, briefly, for a multitude of reasons. "I was not planning to stay."

I am her shadow, he thinks tiredly, and cannot decide what to do with it. Hers, and Imoen's, and Anomen's crucible— He resents it, for a short moment; then, he remembers himself, and curses his bird, his surroundings and his loneliness. Too little to kill, too much time to think: that is the problem.

---

As Mazzy Fentan and Sarevok Anchev deal with their shadows, a gnome is sitting alone in the most notorious tavern of Amn's capital, dealing with his own, drinking to forget.

What happened earlier, with Lissa and Jaella… This reminds him… This reminds him of the previous time with Lissa and Jaella, as a matter of fact; and of all the times before, because this particular tale never changed much. His niece Kylie came to his turnip-and-arms stall to tell him that Lissa showed up, black-eyed and plum-skinned, and with the girl in tow and pleading for shelter. The difference this time was that Jaella was unconscious, and Jan had to search for a competent healer.

Several hours of his running around the city later, Vaelag showed up with an expensive gift, a bouquet of expensive flowers, and a cheap apology; all of which were, predictably enough, accepted. Ma Jansen's ritual scolding followed; and then, Jan could at last escape to the safety of the Copper Coronet.

There is a paladin here, Garoll said; he is undercover, but it is easy to spot him. One of 'em young ones, on the run, prob'ly, like they sometimes run, but he looks the decent sort— Jan, half-drunk already, though the turnip beer here is far from Aunt Petunia's, which reminds him, in fact, of the turnip drought during the Third Great Griffin War, cured only by Uncle Spanky's turnip draught— Tales die before they are properly spun, tonight; half-drunk, therefore and nevertheless, Jan looks around the dim cavern of the Coronet, suffused with the eye-stinging smoke of the pigs roasting on the giant grills. The usual crowd is here: some drunken peasants, some drunken nobles who have come here for the fights, several armed adventurers with the shrilly laughing Coronet slave girls in their laps; fat Bernard, the tapster, and Lehtinan, the owner, by the filthy bar, with the money and the guards— All in all, not the kind of place which often sees a knight. But there is one armed human, out there, in the corner, politely refusing the offer of a slovenly, unbuttoned hostess as he sips his beer—

"Hello," the gnome hears suddenly a sleek female voice. He turns around to follow the boy's example; and is purely stunned.

"I am Valen," the hooded woman says, smiling. She is silver-haired, silver-eyed, pale, cold, and captivating. "And you are—?"

He stands up and bows: this is the kind of dame who must be bowed to. "Jan Jansen. At your service!"

The silver-haired human tastes her words carefully. "The… inventor?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Jan replies, "but have I told you—"

"It does not matter. I have been told that you have unfinished business with a… Vaelag. Do you want to finish it? Yes? Then come." The woman's charming voice snaps like a whip; and Jan, eagerly, stands up and leaves with her the Coronet.

Behind, unseen, a young man starts to trail them.


	37. V: Queenside Castling, 8

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**8**

In the corner of the sunstone-lit chamber, Aerie is heaving.

Everyone else is asleep; and so should be Aerie. In her place, Kriemhild should be guarding the sleeping party together with him; but—

"—I told Minsc to wake up Kriemhild and have her change with me," Aerie explained into his surprised face once he affirmed that no, he did not need her help in healing the bleeding. "T-they needed some time together alone," she added cheerfully. "Don't you think that it's sweet that they have found each other?" she asked in the end, and he carefully feigned lack of surprise. The last time he checked, matters definitely had not yet gotten half that far.

"She is my wife, elf," he pointed out cautiously, looking at the sleeping half-orc figure. His wife; she deserved better—

"W-well, you should better do something before you lose her!" Aerie giggled, interrupting his reverie; after the dream, at third hour in the morning, the high sound pierced his ears like a gibberling's mating call— Then, the absurdity of the first news of day hit him in full, and he almost burst out with laughter himself; apparently, he was being cheated upon.

The husband always learns the last, they say.

---

Now, Aerie is being sick in the corner of the ancient worship chamber; once done, she wipes her mouth with a small, determined hand. He hands her a water flask when, slow, careful, pregnant-like, she has sat down beside him; behind the demarcation line of the overturned statue, the darkness their enemy twists and coils, and watches the party as closely as he watches it. He smiles, vaguely entertained: a question: what does a monster see when it looks into the abyss? An answer: the abyss is infinite. Two negatives do not a positive make; the shadow of a shadow is still darkness; ergo, Altair was wrong. It is not the halfling he fears, if he fears a thing.

By him, Aerie looks around, shudders, and sighs, "Being underground is just… not for the avariel."

They are not underground, but the windows and skylights are all curtained with shadow— "This is merely the influence of the negative energy, elf," he replies, stirring the small fire as Aerie adjusts her warm wood-brown cloak on her shoulders. "It will pass once we leave the temple. And I," he adds, thoughtfully, "will kill my bird."

Aerie knits her brow. "Why?"

A sleepy eagle raises her head. _**Why?**_

"For a metaphor," he replies, with feeling, looking straight at the drowsy beak; beside him, Aerie, unfortunately, giggles, ear-piercingly, again. "You can't kill Altair! She's your familiar."

She points this out as if she were rehearsing talking to her child, he smirks within; yet the point catches his attention. "Imoen told you?"

Aerie blinks. "Y-yes, she did… When she didn't know we two would meet," she tries to defend his sister; he finds this quite amusing as he decides, "My sibling would do well to control better the flow of information around her."

The sibling in question is now, like all others, sound asleep; Nalia and she would take the last watch together— "Well," he looks back at the elf. "Since we did not have a chance to finish our previous conversation, you never told me how you started working in the circus, avariel."

Aerie looks at him for a fairly long moment; at length, she blushes. "I— I-I—" She blinks, and decides, surprised, "It's not important. I-I have scars, but…" She blinks again; he lets her experience her private epiphany, whatever that be, exactly, in peace. The impossible alternative would be, perhaps, to admit— "Imoen didn't tell me how y-you two have met?" he hears, at last, a desperate plea to change the subject matter; and smiles. "It, too, has scarred, perhaps."

Aerie cocks her head. "Perhaps? Y-you do not know?"

"We do not know each other well enough, elf," he reminds her coolly, avoiding the issue.

The pretty creature smiles at him, sincerely. "Y-yes, I know. You refuse to be the…" A deep breath. "The butt of self-con—" A small unhappiness around the mouth; then, another deep breath, this time with closed eyes; then, the large eyes open. "—self-congratulatory compassionate Ilmatari condescendence," Aerie recites briskly, like an actress; and, fairly impressed, he toasts her—only with water, unfortunately. "Precisely."

She almost starts to laugh again; then, reconsiders, and says, in full seriousness, "E-everyone needs help sometimes, Sarevok."

"Even a god?"

Aerie shakes her vixen-like head firmly. "Yes. Or you."

He smiles, not overly offended. "The stone is Ilmater's doing, is it not? He wanted to make sure that we would be able to survive and help Amaunator. That is why you were there, in that hut."

Aerie blinks, several times. "I-I don't know what you are talking about."

He watches her closely, for a moment. "No. Perhaps you do not," he decides in the end. "Amaunator is dead, and could barely incarnate, even in this temple. Your god wanted to ensure that the stone would find its way to us."

"You did not have to buy it," Aerie points out guilelessly.

"No. I did not. And that is what did not fit, initially: had I not, the whole party would be dead now. I could not believe that an allegedly benevolent god would have taken such a risk: eight lives wagered on an uncertain choice. However, you were there. You would have acquired the stone if I had not, Ilmatari." Comprehension brings no satisfaction at this early hour; only bitterness. He appreciates the lesson: benevolence is not tantamount to stupidity. He must admire the ease with which he was manipulated. But he must also resent that, illuminated, his private choice vanished into yet another divine design.

Next to him, the pregnant elf frowns. "I-I suppose so, yes. But," she smiles timidly, "this isn't the point, is it? Y-you eased the pain of those people…" Vaguely, he wonders if Aerie knows that he has already heard this particular sermon from the halfling.

Perhaps she does; she grows serious again. "Y-you're laughing at me, inside, a-aren't you?" she asks sadly; she has hunched slightly, as though she expected to be beaten any moment soon and wanted to protected her part-demon child. "You're not saying a-anything, but y-you're laughing at me. B-but it's all true. T-that's why Nalia and I h-helped you. W-we just think that everyone needs a bit of help, sometimes." She looks at him with… a tincture of equal fright, defiance and determination, perhaps?

—In the end, he decides that he will only precipitate the inevitable. "Nalia, elf, wants me to secure her castle and assassinate her fiancé for her."

Aerie, wide-eyed, gives out a stifled gasp. "No! You're lying!"

For a moment, he almost regrets that he is not. "I am not lying, elf. Ask her about it. Perhaps you will even learn that she is doing that for you."

The end, curt, was spoken in the hope that with it, his involvement in this particular matter of Imoen's is over; predictably, the hope was vain. "F-for me?" Aerie blinks, nonplussed, and a part of him he does not need at this particular moment emerges unbidden and wants to fulfil the pregnant elf's every earlier expectation and, simply, brutally, hit her for her slowness and her naïveté. "But I don't…"

"Ask her," he repeats, forcing himself under control, privately sneering: not all sins of the son can be blamed on the fathers, after all— Aerie looks at him with her large, pretty, blue eyes, and, suddenly, viciously, he lashes out, "Has anyone ever told you that you are like poison vine, elf? You want support. You take support. But you are angry when you are supported against your will. Either stand on your feet, or admit that you will never do so. But then, do not presume to criticise when someone protects you against your will. And even less so, to question their methods."

Then, the anger is gone, vanished as if it had never existed, and belatedly, he remembers where they are, in this black hole of negative energy; if the elf starts to cry here— The optimal course of action would be, perhaps, to wake up Imoen, admit to the critical mistake, and let her clean up after him, again. The very idea smarts.

"I-I'm scared." Aerie's voice trembles, and when he looks back at her, she isn't looking at him, but at an indistinct spot on the marble floor. "T-the last time… Haer'Dalis talked like you do. That I can do everything. Be anyone I want. Just act, m-my dove, and people will believe the pretence, h-he used to say. And then, he left me. Just like that. B-because he could. Because I h-had to be free to f-fly, and he c-could only pull me down, h-he said. And I was alone. A-all alone… And I—I must have people around me. But not to tell me what to do! Just t-to help me. I-if I fall. But—oh! It's so easy… once you've been a slave, to just t-take c-commands. Even from your friends…"

There is a deep sigh, and he decides that, painful or not, he is waking up his sister; then, he hears, "I-I've recovered, and I'm standing up, and I don't know how to tell them that I am grateful for what they've done for me, but I-I will need less of their help from now on…" Then, suddenly, Aerie looks up from the floor. "Baervan, and Ilmater, and the Winged Mother, they are all there to help me, and…" Angrily, she finishes, "I don't want Nalia to kill because of me! I-isn't it enough to put that… that horrible man… into prison?! And I-I don't want—" She falls silent, suddenly; and frowns, "Y-you're laughing at me, again, aren't you?!"

Trying to placate, himself above all, he replies, "I believe, elf, that I do. If you do not want all this, what do you want, instead? You will have a child: where will you have it?"

"Him," Aerie interjects angrily. "It's a he. And his name is Quayle."

"Quayle, then," he replies lightly. "Where will you have him? Who will care for him when you must leave him alone? Have you considered this? I do not want to know," he warns, suddenly; and then, pre-emptively, smirks. "And will give you no help and no advice."

For a while, he hovers, waiting for the inevitable _I don't need any, not from you_; but, though the offended Aerie bristles, no retort strikes the gap he left for her tender and wide-open. Hence he remembers that they are in this place not for idle chat, but to watch the darkness their enemy; and, leaving the elf to her ruminations—he turns to the demarcation line, the shattered statue of the sun defeating the shadow.

---

Beside him, Aerie is thinking, frowning and unconsciously clenching and unclenching her tiny fists; and he wonders, lazily, if her three gods and she will manage to draw up any practical plan; or if her mind, too little used to independence, will fail at the simple task— Himself, he is feeling mildly better. The damage proved not irretrievable.

Now, lost again in the languid, slothful early-morning thought, he paints with his memories: Aerie, besides everything else, is also his mistress Cythandria's colours in his _hatamoto's_ frame— Aerie sighs quietly. "Sarevok…"

Blinking and yawning to start thinking again, he asks, "Yes?"

"I-I think I will need someone to b-be a father for Quayle. B-but not like Haer'Dalis…"

The hesitation is very polite, and he completes, "…or me. I agree. You have Minsc, I believe. And?"

Aerie blinks several times, rapidly, like a bird fluttering her wings; of course, now, he knows why the trite comparisons have imposed on him since he met the elf— "Minsc. Yes. I'm his witch, am I not?" she asks rhetorically, as if she understood something only now; "Minsc," she repeats; then, suddenly, "C-can I ask you something? P-promise that you will not laugh at me?"

Amused, he looks at the vixen face between the two pointy ears, and says, "No."

Now, Aerie is very, very angry. "Fine," she decides. "But… Why don't y-you meet him again?"

Cernd's voice: _she is a vixen, and little escapes her_— He freezes; "Nalia… um, told me?" Aerie explains, with the polite, unhappy pause which perhaps means that Nalia yelled; and he must think that Imoen is not the only one who would do well to control better the flow of information around her.

"He is a paladin," he replies flatly, because he owes her that much, perhaps; and irritated, because the choice was straightforward and correct, and, he would even like to think, a good one: a lifelong career, not a yearly, or two-yearly, at most, affair. Even Mazzy Fentan could not deny that. So all that—

(the memory of a face and a smell and a voice but not a taste, again, the heartburn he would it were the trite indigestion rather the mundane unrequited love, again, the bittersweet lawless inappropriate pride he has no right to feel, again, the pure plain desire, again; an errant emotion no one has really ever needed, and least of all the mercifully ignorant paladin himself—because now, the squire is a true paladin; he must be, if his superiors are true paladins, after all that happened—but of that—no—back—)

—yes: all that is merely regret after a choice already done and made; and that is supremely useless, harmful even, to his human self; as is every regret and as are all regrets. He has, in short, done a second-rate, measly, simply offensive job of recovering, compounding the problem rather than solving it; and so, having just flayed an elf for impracticality, he must treat himself to equal standards; and he suddenly feels the weight of Aran Linvail's gift on his neck; and recoils, swiftly, to escape—

It is not hard, for that one, too, he misses, and sincerely; and Aran Linvail, at least, he will yet meet; he can yet meet—without abject hostility; possibly so; for Aran Linvail is urbane, insincere, a thief and a politician, and as willing to betray one as he is to take one in— Sleek, slick, skilled, ruthless, unfeeling and tender; and there is the geas—

—And, of course, the cure is as pestilent as the disease, and not in the least practical; for neither is Aran Linvail here with him; hence, since the elf is Aerie and Nalia is Imoen's— Speak of the duchess. "What have you two been going on about for so long?" Nalia d'Arnise asks suspiciously behind his back, and he is grateful to her, because he must, and can, gather his wits and fight again; he has an adversary, if not a Ryan Trawl.

"It is impolite, duchess, to eavesdrop on private conversations," he first imparts Mazzy Fentan's wisdom on her estranged second-in-command; and then, lightly, adds his own smug nugget of insight, "And imprudent to admit to doing so." By the noble, holding on to her, closely, his sister raises an eyebrow, "My brother wins this one, Nalia;" and, shutting down, shutting out and shutting off the last of his regrets, he smirks in accord: because, of course, the fault is not his that Nalia d'Arnise does not know the elven tongues—

But Imoen has awoken, and he remembers his dream.

---

The dream repeats; yet it does not.

Around him, the skeletons of houses: the city, his safety, it is dead. A lesson in poetic irony could be found here: you plotted against the safe shelter of others; your own home is now dead and no more; who wields the sword, dies by the sword. But the dream does not purport to teach: it is the call of his Father. It wills but to maim and to spoil. Him, now.

And the city… The dead city is, naturally enough, the city-under-the-city, back in Baldur's Gate; he remembers it well, these rotten frames of households ruined by flood and mudslide. There should be the undead here; they used to find some small amusement in hunting them, once, Tamoko, Semaj, Cythandria and he; but this city is only a fake, an imitation and a replica, and only drawn out of his mind by the bleak temple in Amn— This way; and, for a moment, a heavily-armoured man's heavy footsteps break through—no: add to—the sound of silence.

The gate; beyond it, the door. The temple: another facet of a god's home. His home, once. It is perfect, tonight.

Perfect: drawn and described in perfect, loving detail: tall. Majestic. Ornate. Imposing. Sinister. The adjectives amass: yet, presently, they fade. Only two, those that bear any significance at all, remain: a-hated. And beloved— The dwarf his sister his victim Gorion's child is inside, waiting for him in the back, as always sitting on the altar; her short legs are, as always, dangling off it. "Hello again, Sarevok," she says, as always, as a way of greeting.

"Welcome back, sister," he replies; as always, standing squarely in the centre of the massive, dark hall, on the emblem of his Father; the grinning skull surrounded by the daggers.

Irene, with her chin on her hands, announces happily, "You're such a masochist, you know? Always and always, coming back for more. Haven't you had enough?"

"Haven't you, sister?"

Irene cocks her head, and laughs. "Of killing you? One word, dear brother: Never."

He advances, delicately, feeling a fool. "Why? It serves no purpose, save Father's."

"Because, brother," Irene smiles, "we are the same. Dead or alive, mortal or shadows, we will never be free. And you know that." The roguish grin behind the beard is completely out of place: in life, his spies once told him, the dwarf was not an unserious person.

"Imoen says that you do not hate me," he tries to reason, still; Irene, by reflex, fires magic missiles at him; the stone skins he raised absorb them just in time, and he saw a trace of uncertainty in the dwarf's brown eyes. "She does, doesn't she?" Irene laughs throatily. "She's lying."

The man smiles, finally understanding. "Yes, I know. I care not, sister, for freedom or prophecy. I order you, instead: go. Leave. Leave this place. Leave _me_— And tell this to my Father: Be the face of my sibling and the place of my defeat the two last sights _he_ ever leaves me, I will never love them. I'm not that much of a masochist, sister."

Irene disappears.

---

As the four wizards begin their preparation for the coming fight—"A dragon," Aerie, fumbling around the loose, life-giving belt on her waist, sighs despondently, "Don't worry, Aerie, you'll be all right," Imoen, sliding her pink Arbane's sword back into its sheath, comforts her, "Just remember your spells, little thing, and it will be just like any other fight," Nalia adds with a little smile; then, as the smile turns more private and to Imoen, opening her spell-book, and she decides, "We need a coherent strategy to present to Mazzy;" and Sarevok watches the three merrily bobbing female heads, before agreeing completely with the duchess' idea—

—elsewhere: in Athkatla—another strategy is being finalised. "Yes, brother," a bored vampire tells a mirror, eyeing her newfound army, "This will draw them out. It must."

---

"Valygar and I think that the Shade Lord hid himself from us," Mazzy Fentan says as soon as the whole party have finished eating; Sarevok, following the halfling's and his joint interest, ordered his wife not to stray away from him. "Are you jealous, brother?" Imoen remarked then, pleasantly, privately; and he must laugh together with her at the ridiculousness of the very concept—

"He created illusions of walls from the shadows," Mazzy continues; a duchess who should be Mazzy's lieutenant shoots a look of distaste at the silent Valygar. "We must check them by touch."

Aerie sighs. "By touch? A-all of them? I-I don't think I can keep away the shadows long enough!"

Minsc is sitting by his beloved witch now, and looking—rather disconcerted? Irrelevant; Sarevok frowns, "It may not be necessary. We are in the temple of a solar sect. So far, we saw the altar of dusk, where we met," a nod to the man, "Corthala—"

"And it was the one in the right-hand passage. I get it brother. This is the left passage, and the paintings show dawn!" Imoen interrupts. "So… We're lacking the whole day!"

"The noontide, more likely, sister," he corrects. "The main altar. The hour of triumph."

The beginning of the decay, he adds privately; and then, smirking, the Rule of Threes repeats, again; but Imoen already finishes, "The middle passage. It should be right in front of the main entrance to the temple, Mazzy," she announces with the delight of breakthrough and discovery.

---

The passage is; and then, the staircase is; the party, singularly unmolested, pass through a thick wall of shadows and ascend it slowly. Amaunator, the triumphant, the victor, the unconquered, was not a merciful god.

The steps are yellow marble, and covered with shreds of yellow carpet, and the ceiling and the walls of the stairway are painted yellow and gilt with gold; and the inclination of the steps is perhaps just such that on the noon of the summer solstice, a month from now, the light would fill the passage in full. But the party travel up a dark shaft of cold shadow, and it is only a tiny flicker of light and warmth which illuminates the faces of the enemies, tied, writhing in pain under the god's harsh gaze; or, sometimes, the faces of the heretics, cast away into darkness from the god's yellow presence. All this, skilfully wrought by the faithful in gold leaf, sunstones, tchazars, yellow diamonds and kings' tears; for a moment, Sarevok considers, absently, if the child priestess Amuana's was the first blood on the holiest of altars.

The silent congregation awaits the living on the temple's roof: wraiths and shades, the court of the Shade Lord and his concubine, standing on the low steps which lead to the desecrated altar, far away; away enough that it is lost to the darkness. A faint, ethereal whisper moves the air lightly: the beating of a dragon shadow's wings. Do you see it, Altair? he asks, _**No, master, **_she answers, Take the cat and hide, he commands; Minsc would not give up Boo. Altair obeys.

"Do you see anything, Aerie?" Mazzy Fentan asks. "Anchev?" "No," they both reply in unison. "Minsc, if you can see Merella, shoot her," Mazzy orders; and now, a voice which must be the Shade Lord's, for now it is raspy, sexless and old, and now a young woman's flat, lifeless tone, flows from the gelid heart of shadow, through the gloom, over the heads of the stock-still human shades. "My grim undead hunter has escaped and brought friends, I see? I am glad. Come, join us. The more the merrier." But merriment, in the voice, there is none.

"Boo sees no Evil," Minsc reports. "But Minsc hears Evil!" The disembodied monotone bores on, pitifully, "Valygar? Why won't you answer Merella's plea?" The man shudders, but does not reply, beyond a private grunt, "Undead. All the same. See one, see them all."

"Grim hunter, halfway, you are al—" The rest of the sentence drowns in a sudden shriek; the innards, perhaps, Sarevok decides, for all the Treant's heartwood within Pinn O'Reffen's bow sincerely admiring the Rashemi's blind accuracy; the arrow was Imoen's, barbed and poisoned, and the host will die within minutes, at most.

A mass of hissing follows—

"_Thaxll'ssillyia!"_

—and the battle is not over.

---

Imoen throws a handful of dust high up into the air; for a moment, a talon and a wing's edge are set off in gold against the sky, and Sarevok can almost, almost make out a dragon shadow's silhouette— The spectre has vanished.

"In the name of Ilmater, the Broken God, the Crying God, I command you: sleep!" Aerie intones, watching the gathering of shades, "In the name of Aerdrie Faenya, the Winged Mother, Her of the Azure Plumage, I command you: sleep!" Her gods shield her and her child against negativity, against fear, confusion, against hurt; and so, when the dragon shadow breathes, Aerie intones still, "—In the name of Baervan Wildwanderer, the Forest Gnome, the Masked Leaf; in the name of Amaunator, the Yellow God—I command you: sleep!" And the restless shadows, who cannot sleep, do.

The dragon shadow breathes as it glides towards them; and the silent breath which is not mere coldness, but absolute lack, engulfs the party and drains them of life (but not him, for he is protected; to be considered in free time: how to inflict this rare protection on Imoen). The shadow wings move, and the lightweight women are swept off their feet; and they are all tied one to another, to prevent anyone from leaving the safe spot of light around Amaunator's stone—

Cured, hastened, the archers hunt the stealthy shadow, blindly: blindly shooting arrows, fire arrows which pierce the ethereal body and reveal it to the wizards; who, in turn, pursue it with abjuration spells and with chain lightning and lightning bolts and fireballs and magic missiles and Melf's Acid Arrows which he shoots from a sequencer even as Mazzy Fentan puts another arrow on her yew bow; the spells explode overhead, a feast of sounds and colours against the graphite sky and the incarnadine death fog and killing clouds which Nalia and Imoen summoned— "Oh, my!" Aerie, excited, says in passing, "This is… This is better than the circus!" And, though weakened, Nalia laughs, "I told you!" and so does Kriemhild, firing another oil-covered, blazing bolt from her heavy crossbow.

Thaxll'ssillyia, now perfectly visible for the fire arrows burning within it, circles again to return over their heads; and again they prepare for the wing pummel— This never comes: as soon as Mazzy Fentan's last arrow reaches the shade, it explodes.

---

The dragon has breathed its dying curse; shreds of the curtain its body, still with the fiery arrows within, still smouldering, are falling around the party, slowed down for the fighters' haste. The tinnitus has died out in his ears, and he can see again, and he wants to kill the halfling.

The halfling— Does he really want to kill the halfling? Yes: of course he does. The halfling loathes him, and she strikes at his groin with her short sword in a perfectly meaningful move; he fires off magic missiles at her, and unsheathes the Edge of Chaos; Corthala snorts, "Wizards!" and attacks Nalia, who is attacking Imoen—he knew his sister was wrong to welcome that bitch into her bed—but Imoen is here, just behind Mazzy, and her, the competitor, the sibling, he must kill first— With a cry of, "Butt-kicking for goodness!" Minsc attacks Aerie.

Movement behind. Corthala must take him for a complete fool, to think Sarevok didn't notice— Aerie is muttering some spell, and Imoen is about to hit her, is approaching the elf with murder, not kill, in her eyes, but Kriemhild, enraged, hits Minsc on the head and the man falls in Imoen's path— She walks over him, as befits a future goddess; Sarevok brushes off Nalia to get her out of his own way— The way where, exactly? It does not matter. To kill his adulterous wife, possibly.

Then, Aerie dispels the magic and ends the chaos, and, amidst a chorus of contingency stone skin spells, Sarevok emerges into reason.

He is killing Valygar Corthala: a katana, however spirited, is woefully inadequate against the full impact of a Deathbringer's assault; and the man, grim, depressed, is frozen in his spot, and awaiting death with terror customary for Sarevok's victims. Muscles strain and scream their furious protest; but Sarevok has committed his entire strength into setting into motion the heavy mass of the Chaos Edge; to stop it, now, in full swing, is impossible. Even Kriemhild's femur club has been only a slight hindrance.

The delay has been long enough. A brief, tactless push, and Valygar has been sent reeling to the security of the floor, under the dragon shield— "This one begs excuse for interfering, husband," his wife is now saying calmly; then, more curious than anything else, inquires, "If the weakskin is, in all truth, to die…?"

"No!" he replies, slightly too loudly, realising what her raucous orcish argot actually means. "No," he repeats; Kriemhild, without one further word, puts that shard of bone which remains of her father's weapon back into the Peridan's sheath, unsheathes her scimitar, and, purposefully, walks away. Himself, he is still dazed, almost as much as his victim manqué.

---

A moment later, sword still in hand, but with his control recovered, he looks around to survey what other damage the brief bout of insanity has wreaked.

Imoen, pale, ashen-faced, unhurt, is looking at him with relief rivalling his own; Imoen's cat is trotting up to her; Minsc is getting up from the floor; his shoulders are suddenly taken by an involuntary spasm— "I am shamed," he tells Aerie, taking off his helmet, "I would offer my head for the taking, but for that I have lost it! Again! I am worthless!" The elf is watching him with wide-open eyes, putting a small hand on his large one, telling him, "D-don't worry, Minsc—" The hamster, judging from the squeak, survived; Kriemhild is lifting Nalia from one of the holes in the floor which is the ceiling of the temple below; so he almost killed the duchess, too— But no; she was bound to the rest of the company.

"Drat!" Nalia d'Arnise swears, heedless of her paleness, her exhaustion, her emaciated face, her near-death experience; then, with her entrained politeness, she halts. "Thank you, Kriemhild— But _drat_! We told you, Mazzy— Mazzy?"

"Mazzy?" Valygar Corthala repeats.

"The shadows," Sarevok replies; they are stirring.

---

Mazzy Fentan, it is promptly discovered, has in her confusion cut the rope which used to join her with her party; and has wandered away, in between the sleeping shades. Now, she is a shadow to Altair's eyes; a shadow standing before the shadow of a desecrated altar on the other side of the shadow crowd, over the shadow of a woman's body whereto the shadow of the woman's soul is still bound, with an umbral parody of an umbilical cord; like a slave girl, a consort, to her master.

"Knight, you will be the sweetest of my concubines," the body of Merella rasps with the Shade Lord's warped promise; the swirling slave shades which Aerie decided yesterday to spare, rise, and thicken, and grow. The party reforms to face them, instinctively: four fighters first, three wizards behind them— Mazzy Fentan's faint, solitary voice reaches them through the gloom. "No! I am a good person!"

The party, unanimously, start towards the altar, fast; as fast as they can. But soon, that is not fast at all. How far away are you, Altair? Sarevok frowns.

_**I don't know, master. Far. It is… heavy, here. Heavy heart? Despair.**_

Through the thick bleakness, each step takes a century; they, one feels, will never reach the altar. "The laws of chaos order… The noblest souls in life have the most delightfully depraved shadows…" beyond the horizon, the Shade Lord now threatens, now announces, now coaxes, now gloats; and then, he does not, and instead, a grain of pure darkness leaves Merella's body.

Mazzy takes a wild, futile jab at the parasite as it heads towards her. "I—" she speaks her mantra and her shield, insistently, "I _am_ a good person!"

"Anyone doubts that?" on the party's side, Nalia d'Arnise asks with mild shock. "I mean—"

"Besides Mazzy, that is?" Imoen retorts acidly; Valygar Corthala sharply turns his head towards her. "What do you mean?" He does not finish; Minsc announces, perplexed, "But Mazzy is a hero! Why—" Before them, unseen by them, in the heart of darkness, Mazzy Fentan is eyeing her short sword with sudden, mad intent.

We are, indeed, heroes, Sarevok silently curses his company: for the vote is cast and decided already. For propriety, he asks, "Wife?" "This one follows, husband," she reminds him, orcish words in human tongue; Aerie looks oddly at the pair of them. "Aerie?" he finishes, pleasantly, "Mazzy? The stone?"

"Y-yes," she nods. "I-I think s-so… Minsc, c-could you, please… Throw it to her?" the elf makes a little, unhappy mouth; quite unwilling to bother, indeed.

---

He yells to attract her attention. "Fentan! The altar—"

Darkness falls.

The world erupts with white, cleansing pain.


	38. V: Queenside Castling, 9

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**9**

_**Danger always strikes when everything seems fine.**_

Where were you with such wisdom when Ryan Trawl was riding to arrest me? Sarevok muses, without offence, as he is standing in the pleasant spot of warmth still keeping on the northern side of the holiest of Amaunator's altars, now set afire by the silent, brisk and bright sun of the late morning.

Far below him lies the temple's main courtyard with its cracked pilasters and fountains; beyond it is the forest; the yellow marble raft of the rooftop terrace is floating on a sea of fir verdure under a welkin of sheer azure. The scents and colours are strong and staggering, and, after the recent discreet, low-key monochrome, indescribably tawdry, tasteless, overdone and optimistic.

Himself, he had tanned somewhere on the sinuous way from Athkatla here, he has discovered, to his private delight; but then, he has always easily tanned; the proper high-born lady, Imoen is still pale. The beard—

_**Why worry about a beard when your head's about to be cut off, master? **_

What has got into your own head today, bard? he asks the eagle perched on his braced forearm, amused; and then, solves her riddle: The classic answer would be: because it is mine. I don't remember your ever complaining, bird.

The Edge of Chaos is with him, as always it should be; and the sibling is behind, still asleep with the rest of her party— The moment lacks perfection; yet he smiles, suddenly: Servant, for breakfast, I will have fish.

_**I am not a fishing bird, master, **_protests she at that, at last laughing; Learn, then, how to be one, pleasantly, he cuts the protests short. Fish roasted under a sauce of molten cheese, freshly ground pepper and wild berries; the way they serve it in Baldur's Gate, in the ducal palace—

He releases her, hence, and he flies her, and she flies, spreading her wings wide as she takes a deep plunge into the precipice below her master; today, she is imperial, and stately, and slow, and like an avariel who still has her wings; and he loves her.

Together, then, they soar high into the sky, to see far, to see a flow, to see a fish glistening in the sunlight; feeling the sun and the wind in her feathers, for a lengthy moment free of all fears and worries— She cries in joy, and this lasts, long enough; but then, Minsc's sad words filter into the foreground of Sarevok's consciousness.

"Boo likes the forest, and the purpose is great and glorious. But I have my witches to protect! Alas, Minsc cannot stay."

Frowning, the half-human makes himself perfectly invisible, and charily steals a look behind the triumphant golden chariot-riding idol, forever blessing the bodies of his faithful with his outstretched hand— The nymph who is walking with Minsc amidst the drained, lifeless husks; the scattered remnants of the blackened arrows; the cracks and holes in the yellow marble floor— She is slim and tall, queenly, evergreen with black eyes and a nest of long, black hair; she looks and smells like a fir, a spruce—or Sarevok's own wife; but she is even less human than Kriemhild, and is beautiful and ageless.

"You will never finish your dajemma, Minsc," dressed in a long, thick-woven, elm-bark gown, harshly, in a rook's croak, the crone croaks; eyeing the Rashemi coolly over the high cheekbones of her gaunt, angular face.

"That may be so, if so it must be," the barbarian replies; his own eyes, in turn, are dull and mirthless, without much hope. "But I will not abandon my duty! Boo would never forgive me."

Mairyn, for it must be she, nods regally. "Such steadfast loyalty is commendable in a servant of nature, Minsc. I leave you until noon to decide— Now, you," she turns to Sarevok; who, amused, sees himself visible again, "I know of you, but you are not known to me. Young Vaelasa from the south sends her greetings and her gratitude—" Apparently, trees tell tales of his deeds; he does not like it. "—but Nilthiri told me that you are cast out from her lands, and my sisters from Cloakwood promise that if you ever set foot in Abela's forest again, you will dearly pay for it—"

"They need not fear," he replies lazily as, briefly, he recalls an acquaintance past, "Even though they did nothing when I was available for their vengeance."

Mairyn sizes him up and down, and ends her speech, "I am the heart and soul of this forest. Explain yourself to me. Have you come here as friend, or foe? Which—"

---

"—is it?" Mazzy Fentan, in her golden armour, intercepts from under the idol, yawning; and the others of the party have awoken, and are quickly covering the short distance separating them from the men, the forest's spirit, and the party's leader.

"Mazzy!" Nalia, in her short blue cape, almost runs up the cracked marble stairs to hold close the halfling, and the image of Nalia jumps around in wild happiness; Aerie, stately in her white, gold and brown, follows smartly. "W-we were so scared about you, Mazzy!"

Mazzy smiles. "I'm so glad to see the two of you, too! And you, too, Imoen. And—Valygar. Minsc. Kriemhild. I'm happy that you are all safe and sound! And this is… yours, I think, is it not, Anchev?"

His stone is still glowing with the muted, warm light of a latent promise; "Yes, it is," he replies, absently, easily, in the civil anticlimax, as he hides it; the dryad has disappeared in a whiff and whirl of fir needles, and the promise of a rematch. "Thank you, Fentan."

"You are welcome," replies the halfling, stiffly, in her best-mannered, clipped tone; before also briskly moving to this next point of business. "But who was it, Minsc? Who were you two talking to?"

The barbarian, smoothly, for him, lies, "Mairyn. The forest thanks the heroes!"

"This is not good?" Kriemhild asks; "It doesn't seem to make you too happy, though," Imoen remarks; "Yes. What is it, Minsc?" Nalia adds.

"Mairyn wants me to stay," Minsc admits, looking now at Mazzy, now at Aerie, now at Nalia, and now at Kriemhild— But it is the taciturn Valygar Corthala, of whom everyone has forgotten, who speaks out, loudly, suddenly, "The forest wants you to take Merella's place?"

"Mairyn does," Minsc replies demurely.

Beside her protector, Aerie smiles, brightly. "But t-that is wonderful, Minsc!"

"It is?!" Minsc and Nalia ask in concert, the former happy, the latter sceptical; "Why?" Mazzy Fentan demands.

The object of their joint offensive bites her lip and draws a deep breath. "B-because…" She closes her eyes; then, opens them, and recites, "Because I want to stay in Imnesvale, too. I-I won't go with you when you leave, Mazzy, Nalia," Aerie adds, unhappily, "I-I'm sorry."

Minsc beams. "My witch wants to stay in the forest?!"

"Can you, _please_, be silent for a moment, Minsc?" my lady d'Arnise, together with her patience, snaps; then, in a much kinder tone, she adds, "Aerie? Did I— Yes, I mean, of course, I heard you correctly, but… Why, little thing? What are you talking about?"

"Yes," Mazzy adds, "I'd like to know it, too."

Now, Aerie makes a small mouth. ""W-well— I-I—" The closed eyes, again; the clenched fists, again; the recitation, again. "T-this place is nice," she, lamely, manages as her shoulders droop.

"Nice?!"

"Nalia!" Mazzy's tone is almost gentle when she asks, further, "Aerie?"

The elf, however, is already arguing at her friends, "Yes, n-nice! A-and t-there is the Understone, and Min, and Elence, in the barter post, a-and the people here don't even have a decent healer, and I'm really good with t-that, and Uncle Quayle taught me h-how to make potions, too— A-and if Minsc stays here— I-I have to— I-I want to stay somewhere, Mazzy. I-I'm so t-tired of moving from p-place to place… N-never staying anywhere long… And there is Quayle…"

"…and I told you, Aerie, did I not? I will take you with me to my castle."

"Excuse me?"

No one pays Mazzy Fentan much heed; the large eyes open wide in terror. "I-I don't want to go to your castle, Nalia! I-I don't really like human cities! T-they are so crowded, and… well, dirty, and people l-look at me a-and—"

In the background, Valygar Corthala shakes his head and walks off, heading for the bodies scattered around the altar. Sarevok's own escape is arrested: Imoen lands a hand on his shoulder. Stay, brother, she tells him, with a look, without a word, without need.

He watches Aerie, instead, now herself eyeing wistfully a redhead; she is calmer now, again, as she makes her case. "I-I don't want to go with you, Nalia… I want to stay h-here."

"You want to stay here," Nalia repeats. "_You_ want to be some kind of a village witch in this— This—" The hopeful duchess looks desperately around the silent temple roof, the silent forest; the silent sky of the warm morning. "This _place_. In the middle of—no, at the _end_ of nowhere." Suddenly, her wandering gaze becomes much sharper as it turns to Sarevok. "Has _he_ been telling you things again?!"

All eyes are on him now; hence, he feels compelled to answer to his cue; hence, he folds his arms, and smiles, coolly, "No."

His sister's redhead is gorgeous when she is furious; gorgeous and dangerous. "No?!"

"H-he hasn't been telling me anything! Well, h-he told me about what you two want to do, a-and—" Aerie, with her fists clenched, comes to his succour; then, falls silent; then, finishes, "I-I don't like it!"

Kriemhild stirs, and eyes him darkly; Mazzy Fentan's own gaze now rivals a beholder's. "Anchev?"

He smiles again, down on her; the part is simple, now. "The duchess, Fentan, has employed me to retrieve her fee. The minutiae are, I believe, up to her discretion."

Imoen looks at him, surprised; Aerie, with confused betrayal; "Exactly!" Nalia d'Arnise lets out the breath which she has been holding. "This is it. I'm sorry, Mazzy, but it's—it's as well you learnt this now. I really can't stay with you. I have learnt much from you—and I really _am_ grateful to you—but it's high time I returned to my proper station. There is so much to be done—"

Mazzy Fentan puts a small hand on her forehead, and sighs deeply. "I… see," suspicious, distressed, unconvinced, she replies, "I see. Yes. But why didn't you come with it to me first, Nalia?"

That one looks at her bitterly. "I tried, Mazzy. Believe me… I tried."

For a moment, silence reigns; until Mazzy Fentan, awakened from her dream, suddenly, sharply, still holding Nalia's gaze, speaks up, "Someone has to pick the jewellery and the personal things from the bodies, if there are any, for the families. Minsc, Kriemhild, can you go help Valygar? Imoen, Anchev? We…" A brief look at Aerie. "The three of us have to talk. Alone."

---

"I am worried! Boo says nothing good comes from a witches' quarrel!"

—"They will be fine, Rashemi," in the end, Sarevok replies; then, to put his mind to the allocated task, asks, "Shall we? Sister? Wife?"

Valygar Corthala, they find nearby, crouched, contemplating with a hard face a young woman's body. "Here. It should fit you," he says curtly as soon as the four of them catch up with him, and he pushes towards Kriemhild a suit of ashen-coloured mail. "Perhaps less people would take your wife for an orc if you dressed her properly," he almost throws at the half-orc's husband.

"If this was supposed to be an apology, Valygar, perhaps _you_ should have tried a bit harder," Imoen steps up in her sister-in-law's defence as Sarevok smiles, "You are not making friends here, Corthala."

The man's face pales. "Damn. This went completely wrong. Look." He rises from the ground. "I'm sorry. I'm not good with words. I'm sorry. It was Merella's," he adds, looking from the dead woman to the half-orc.

Kriemhild is watching her husband expectantly; he shrugs. "Take it, wife, if you want to. Perhaps the man has some sense, after all." And the ashen scale is superbly crafted. ("Look, Boo! These are wyvern scales!" Minsc gushes in the background.)

Kriemhild nods, once; and then, stiffly, she turns to the man. "Thank you."

That one eyes her oddly. "No. Thank you. You saved my life, after all. For what it is worth."

Emboldened, his wife points to the body, and, cocking her head, attempts further small talk, "_Halarn?_ This is wife?"

For a moment, Corthala's face hardens; then, in view of the half-orc's candid visage, it soothes again. "No. A friend. We fought together in more places than I can remember. I didn't even come to Imnesvale to see her, but—" He halts; then, speaks with sheer hatred in his voice, "That it was still the undead which got her in the end."

"Mmm," Kriemhild says. "Sorry?"

Then, clearly feeling that this is inadequate condolence, she looks at her husband, and he feels obliged to say: for this is, perhaps, the promise his stone hides— "Amaunator took care of his own, I believe."

At this, suddenly, the man's face bursts with contained fury. "And the rest of them?! Kelemvor will sort them out? I don't believe in gods."

"_Nalia… I-I— When we first met? Y-you told me about the Crying God, remember? Took me to that shrine on Waukeen's Promenade? Ilmater helped me a lot, but y-you…"_

"You are faithless?" Imoen asks, curiously, as Sarevok must frown at Aerie's voice within his mind.

"Yes, I am," the man, meanwhile, spits at his indifferent sister. "Yes, I know that I will end on the Wall, one day. Can we end this conversation, now?"

Sarevok shrugs. "As you wish." No Bhaalspawn needs fear the Wall of the Faithless, of all places.

"…_y-you, too, have ch-changed a lot! Mazzy is right… I-I don't recognise you, sometimes!"_

"Yes," Imoen starts, suddenly, in accord. "Kriemhild, I also must really talk with Sarevok. Could you and Minsc help Valygar? Please?"

_**Master?**_

"We will cook," his sister finishes, eyeing the monster of a fish his treacherous bird has brought.

---

Imoen sighs, almost inaudibly, as they sit down, alone, in a corner of the marble terrace; in the still, stifling heat, the freshly caught trout has already started to reek.

"You know, brother," she starts, cautiously, watching him as he is watching the catch, "I can't say I'm not impressed. It took you all of three days to completely wreck the lives of three adult women."

He eyes the fish further as he starts to clean the scales off of it. "I agree, sister: it is curious what the Rule of Threes, an inherent talent, and a bit of village gossip will do— Where is your cat? He might enjoy the entrails."

"Stop it, brother," Imoen replies amiably. "Pangur is with Nalia, of course. Look at me. We must talk. Really talk."

"—_Yes, as a matter of fact, Mazzy, the whole system! All the things we're doing here, they— They will be useless otherwise! What's so wrong about having a bit of ambition, pray tell me?" _

He puts away the knife and the dead fish, vulnerable caught in this mundane, common, servant's place. "Well, sister—?"

Now, that she may speak, Imoen is silent; and so, sick of the silence, he adds, "I have disarmed myself, sister. Let us talk. Or shall we forego the interrogation and move straight on to the verdict?"

Imoen eyes him coolly. "You are fibbing, brother. Either that, or, worse, you are being childish. What is it? Mazzy does not like you? Nalia can change her mind about you, too, you know, after what you've done."

He must smile. "Beggars cannot be choosers, is it, sister?"

"Yes. But you, brother, never beg."

Irritated, he counters, "Then judge me."

"What? Sarevok, stop it—"

"Judge me. Now," he insists. "Seven makes a jury, does it not? The prosecutor, the attorney, the sponsor, the spouse and the sibling; the indifferent stranger and the village cretin! Is that not enough? No paladin could have assembled a prettier court of justice."

Imoen eyes him oddly, up and down: once, twice, thrice. "Gods," she says, quietly, surprised. "You mean that— You really mean that, brother."

Does he mean that? Words. Words, words, words—! He smiles, desperately, as he decides, with relief, "Yes. Why not—? You were right, sister. Fentan hates me. Wherefore should not Fentan hate me? After all, Fentan is afraid that, one day, she will turn into me; and since, if needed, devoid of enemy, Fentan will turn on herself; if devoid, further, of a reason, then for the very lack of pangs of conscience— Fentan, let me tell you, sister, loves to hate me."

"_But if you must put it this way, then… nothing, of course. Not if it is used in a good way, for a good purpose. I only wish you remembered that the ends—"_

"And she has a very good reason for her hatred, sister. Look around you. See—" He must halt, again; he must press his mind to remember— "Merella. Lilah, who was Willet's mother; Groos' son; Groos' wife; Johanna's daughter— The forest itself, and its wolves, because, sister, mind that we are also the saviours of this forest; mind, further, the earth's salt, the good people of Imnesvale— Take them all, sister. Together. They must have some value, do they not? Their work does. The forest's timber does. The human's lives must do. However, sister, to me, they are statistics. They have always been statistics, and they have never ceased to be statistics. And to turn into— Into her: proselytising, running around with the sword, fighting those little fights, others' fights, limiting myself, attempting to convince these ordinary, mundane half-wits, in vain, that I am a good person, and that, as I say that, I am to be believed; to spend what little remains of my mortal life on this thankless, tedious, _boring _altruism— Until the day Irenicus finds me; or the day the prophecy finds us—" It dazzles the mind how liberating it feels to say all that, aloud; but his sister—

"Are you insane, brother?" she asks, hoarsely, before she corrects herself, "Again?"

He shrugs. "Perhaps. Perhaps I am. Again. Then, again, I have broken out latest pact, have I not? Allow me to assure you, first: not without a motive… And that? Perhaps I wanted the elf to know to what crime she would be accessory. Perhaps I was sick of your girlfriend's pretence. Perhaps I thought that a craven elf was unnecessary ballast to Nalia's plans; or to my plans; and perhaps I wanted to annoy Fentan. Or, perhaps, your friends should merely be glad that they survived three days of not only mine, but our joint company—"

"—_I failed you."_

"Sarevok!"

"Yes?"

Awake in the sun-filled world, they are sitting over the stinking remains of the dead fish, that odd creature, deer-like and cat-like and swan-like and human, female and divine, and eyeing him with something oddly akin to concern; and, on the other side, he. "So that is what he meant," Imoen says, to herself more than to him.

"Who?"

"Pangur."

Surprised, he scowls. "Your cat?"

"He told me," Imoen looks at him pointedly, "that your bird told him that you were trapped playing with shadows in a labyrinth of mirrors. And I thought— Well, that's exactly what an excess of philosophy does to a person. But, brother—"

"_Tell me, how does Anchev mean to—" "…hasn't told me yet, but I think—"_

His sister falls silent; in the end, she bites her lip and asks, "When were you going to tell me what Nalia wanted you to do?"

---

"Never, possibly," he says after he unfreezes from the initial surprise; this is not the question he anticipated. He might play the fool, now, since Imoen has even less proof than he does of Nalia's designs, but— "I agreed to her plans, sister."

"Yes. You did," Imoen, herself, agrees. "And Aerie?"

He must smile. "The elf made her own choice to speak— Roenall is a slaver you would love to kill, sister."

"Then, perhaps, I will," Imoen replies.

"Yes, perhaps you will," he agrees, remembering, first, Rielev; then, the day when his sister turned from a killer into a murderer; and then, remembering his own, back in that dark alley, ten, or perhaps, fifteen, or twenty years ago; but, yes— "You make your own kills yourself." One must respect that.

"Yes, I do," his sister repeats. "And if you still don't want to make yours, then Nalia will simply have to find herself another assassin— I was wondering, you know," she alters her tone, suddenly, "Why you were behaving like you were, before. Why you wouldn't come, wouldn't talk to us, when we were waiting for Valygar to wake up, or in that dawn shrine… Why you were— You were moping in the shadows, instead, you know? _Moping._ I didn't know you _knew_ how to mope. But you were. Always moping over your diaries, or quarrelling with Mazzy, and always so… Irritable. Fractious. Moody. And you treated Minsc so miserably, even in the village, and you were always juggling… holding onto that stone of yours, and you were always so absent, so—not there—"

"—_so… so wrapped in yourself and your own importance!"_

Imoen snorts. "Exactly. Or, well, maybe no— No. I don't want it to end up like this. I want to know, brother. And you, you reminded me of Xan, I'm not sure if you remember Xan—" She cast an anxious, furtive look in his direction, "You didn't kill him," she asserts, as firmly as unexpectedly. "Irenicus did. Xan was an elf, always moping, moping, moping… I didn't like him, I think."

She takes a brief pause, and adds, with sudden, private bitterness, "I also think I still have that pommel jewel. From his sword."

Then, his sister surfaces from whatever memory is troubling her, and finishes, briskly, now looking at him, "But that's not why I wanted to talk, of course. I just wanted to say that I was annoyed at you, too, you know? When you said nothing. When we, Nalia and I, I mean, when we decided that there really wasn't any reason that we should not stay together, be together, and you even said that you noticed that, but it still felt as if you simply did not care either way— And," she laughs lightly, "let me tell you, was it weird to realise that I wanted some sign that my next-of-kin approved of my choice— Even a dirty little joke— But, brother—"

He is sick of the words. "Have you just compared me to a neurotic elf, sister?"

---

"_Nalia… you know how it is between my sister and me, don't you? After Patrick died—"_

Imoen eyes him curiously. "Do you know how you look, brother?"

A minor illusion: the caster's reflection, the self's likeness suspended in the air. He casts it, briefly, and sees himself, at last: haggard, haphazard, and wasted, like an ancient god; and, like a beggar, exposed in this state for all worldly to see.

When you are watching the others, they are watching you, Rieltar Anchev had once warned, long ago; watch yourself, therefore; it is not only to the Abyss that the maxim applies. They had all looked like that, yesterday, before Amaunator sent them to sleep and the sleep restored them; after the Shadow Dragon breathed at them; but he had been protected from that, even then, and— He watches. All the muscle; all the body— It is still there, physically, as is, indeed, his beard, unkempt; but it is all subdued; the blood on his hands is muted in colour, and his eyes— They are weak, dim and hungry, in the air saturated with sunlight. It is as if he had aged years in days, he notes, distantly, as he studies the new lines on his face.

"It's hit you even worse than Mazzy… Now that I think of it, already in the village," Imoen, behind him, speaks quietly, without giving him the chance to comment, "Aerie kept casting protections on you, but they did not work. In the end, we decided that there must be some other reason, that you're letting it in, somehow— Aerie told me that you were missing Anomen," she adds, lightly embarrassed, as he still looks, morbidly fascinated, at the pathetic shadow of a human he sees. "No, sister," he replies, calmly, as he dispels the image, "No more."

"I won't lie to you," Imoen says sharply as she narrows her eyes—

"It may be simply the geas," he interrupts, calmly, desperate to abandon the search for his tainted soul. "Imoen, I will be going to Athkatla. Fentan does not want to suffer my presence here longer than it is absolutely necessary. The feeling is, assuredly, mutual."

He picks up the trout which looks like a salmon, again; this time, his sister offers no protest—and he begins to carefully scrape the scales off the fish, to open it and gut and fillet it; feeling himself like his current victim, in the sun and the light and the heat, in the stench, in the open.

---

"—_daughters to me—" "Yes, Mazzy, but even children leave the home some day, don't you think?!" "S-sometimes, I w-wish…" "I think, Nalia… I forgot— Or, better said, didn't want to remember—"_

Imoen has sat by him to help him, now: she has taken the Imnesvale cheese out of her bag and is cutting it into small cubes; the odour of cheese mingles in the heated air with the smell of fish. "When you will be going to Athkatla, brother," she speaks out, carefully, "I will be going with you. Without Nalia."

He raises his head, surprised, "Why? All I—"

She raises her head, too, and their eyes lock. "Because I know how the geas can be dissolved."

He freezes. "You do."

"Yes, I do, brother," Imoen replies as she lowers her gaze back to the food they are preparing. "And maybe I did not think— Nalia told me that Mazzy was very different, once. I'm—"

"Imoen," he must interrupt; the art of the apology eludes him, as usual, and his only comfort must be the words of the first fratricide: "You are my keeper no more than I am yours, sister;" and then, "The dragon covenant was in effect, I believe, only until you found some real friends."

The moment the jest is out in the air between them, he realises the mistake he has committed; the moment, too late.

Imoen frowns. "So, brother, you were jealous?" she accuses, now sincerely, "Am I to remind you that I swore no oath that you are safe from me?"

"No," he lies, with sudden irritation, for that reminds him of the prophecy between them. "You were not unhappy, sister."

"No," replies she, "I was not. And they really did not need your interference."

"No." He must smile. "That is why they are dealing with what they need themselves now— Are you jealous, sister?"

"Yes. But what I actually meant, brother, is… They did not need your interference. And you can ignore me all you want, and never apologise, and be moody, and obnoxious, and all that, all you want, and I'm not that much worse for it— No, wait! Yes, I'm lying, but— It's Kriemhild, you know? She's doing pretty well on her own, yes. And I'm trying to help her, and she likes Minsc… But, in the end, she is your child. Your wife. You can't ignore her. As long as she is in your presence—"

Sometimes, he wishes he had just killed the half-orc. "Yes, sister. I know. Believe me, I do have some basic grasp of orcish customs."

"_An explanation, not an excuse, Nalia. That is all. Of course I will help you."_

Imoen gives him a look of vague badly-hidden pity. "Mazzy will sort them out," she says. Then, she smiles, briefly. "If Aerie's supposed to be the village witch here, then, I guess, I'd better give her my potions book— Although I do wonder who will help Mazzy," she finishes sharply.

Seen through Altair's eyes, heard through Altair's ears, Nalia d'Arnise is still fuming; and, as the warm day moves slowly on towards the noon, all he can tell his sister to excuse himself is, "Corthala."

"Valygar?" Imoen muses. "I don't know. I mean, Merella's Merella, but he's here on that family business of his— Brother."

"There is something you two should see," Valygar Corthala speaks out. "Since Mazzy is still busy."

---

The something is, first, Kriemhild, in Merella's ashen scale; the armour is an almost perfect fit, and, while his wife mutely blushes as he tells her so, Imoen eyes a finely crafted mithril medallion, thing the second. The two men and Kriemhild have gathered what few rings and necklaces and, in one desperate case, locks of hair, there were among the bodies; but this could have belonged to no villager of Imnesvale. "I saw such emblems in Sir Jamis' army. In Tethyr."

The insignia are unmistakable. "A Tombelthen."

"A wizard," Valygar Corthala speaks his pyrrhic triumph. "The fool must have heard a story about a gold-filled temple, came here to check, broke the seals and released this… thing." He spits, curtly, businesslike. "It took just this one cretin for them all to die. Him, and the original one. Amuana's, or what's-her-name's, killer. Will you wizards _ever_ learn?"

As Sarevok considers whether the man, even now, knows his own history, Imoen asks, "You think that he was the one who released the Shade Lord?"

Kriemhild nods. "Yes. He stinks. Bad."

"Yes! It was Boo who found him. And Boo's nose never fails to find an Evil Wizard!"

---

"I _still_ don't believe the hamster talks to him," Valygar mutters.

"Boo is my friend and companion, and more than he seems," Minsc replies with good-natured cheer; his hamster, for the moment safe from the familiars, is nibbling on a piece of fruit. "He has been with me ever since my h-h-head wound, and has never led me wrong! But he tells me," he whispers conspiratorially, "that a hamster, though always a very good comrade in arms, is not the best choice of a friend for every man of the forest. Your disposition, for example, is more suited to a hound."

"I am not a man of the forest as you are, Minsc," the other man retorts curtly, eyeing the Rashemi askew.

"I still wish we had some fruit to add to the fish," Sarevok muses as he kindles a small fire and puts the fish, finally, to roast; and as his sister, who starts to grind the pepper, thickly, as is proper, in the peppermill, laughs. "You'll like it, Kriemhild," she says, on the side, to her sister-in-law. "I promise."

In the corner of his eye, he sees Valygar watch them curiously; at last, the man shrugs. "Given the season, there should be some wild berries in the forest. If we have time—"

"Berries?!" Minsc frowns. "I can ask Mairyn for some good berries to aid the heroes! If Khelliara wills, Mairyn will grant—"

The purple ring of the tribal markings on Minsc's face almost seems to turn in concert with his throaty whispers, the beating of the hooves of the wild horses running across the steppe; then the world becomes the steppe, and the ice dragons, and the harsh winters, and the scorching summers, and the wild horses in run; and the Wychlaran, the true Rashemen hathran who tattooed the runes into the Rashemi berserker's skin— And there is a huntress there, too; and sheis Mielikki.

"Here we are. The best of forest's berries for the forest's saviours!" Minsc intrudes proudly; and Sarevok, frowning, distressed, blinking, disoriented, must return to the Mirtul mid-morn heat of Amn. "See them, Boo?! Go for them, Boo!"

"_But Mazzy, y-you have y-your way of helping people, I-I have mine, I think… a-and Nalia h-has hers…?" "Aerie, please…" "No, Nalia. I-I—"_

---

"_No, Nalia. I-I'm so sorry, but no… I-I really want to stay here! _

"_Haer'Dalis—"_

"_Haer'Dalis taught m-me something, too! Nalia… It m-may not be the best choice. But this will be my choice… d-don't you understand? And I will not regret it. Oh, please understand!"_

---

"You have prevailed, then," he speaks as he folds his arms, leaning against a pilaster. "How does victory taste, elf?"

The fountains of the grassless marble courtyard of the solar temple are no longer frozen still, but are running with cool, clear water; standing in a spot of pleasant shadow, the elf and he are watching Nalia d'Arnise and— "Imoen!" the redhead duchess complains; Imoen has spattered her girlfriend with a spray of small silver water droplets.

"I'm terrified," Aerie, pensive, says, not tearing her eyes off the picture. "Nalia—" She halts; Nalia did not speak much when the two of them met with Imoen and with him; she had eyes only for Imoen, and hasn't looked at Aerie since; and even her laughter now bears a trace of desperate, artificial longing for genuine mirth. He wonders, in passing, if the duchess had not loved the elf, after a fashion, his fashion, after all.

Aerie sighs, and looks at him at last. "B-but Mazzy said she would come to see me if she's around, and t-there's the forest, and I-I will have Minsc, and… Um. You wouldn't let Kriemhild stay with us, would you, Sarevok?" she inquires, politely.

He eyes her critically from the vantage of his height. "Do you think you are fit to deal with her, elf? She will not be nice to you simply because you will be nice to her. She is in half an orc. She was raised like an orc. She thinks like an orc. She calls you her enemy."

"I-I know," the elf sighs quietly again. "I just t-think that… she may need Minsc as much as I do? And they may need her in the village… And," she giggles, suddenly, "she c-can knock out Minsc, if he gets too excited!"

"She is also rich, and knows orcish cures and the rudiments of bone-setting," he provides, coolly, mildly offended. "Their women all know them, in between the constant tribal warring. However, this is not what I asked you about, elf. Even assuming that I agree, and that she agrees, Minsc alone will be inadequate company for her. She will need a counsellor and an advocate. And you are about to have a child."

Aerie frowns and considers. "I think," she cocks her vixen-like head, and, for a moment, light reflexes jump from Altair's feather in her golden hair, "t-that you came here just to ask me this, didn't you, Sarevok? I-if I wouldn't take care of her?"

He shrugs. "To put matters more clearly, elf, to shift my responsibility to you and burden you with my wife at the outset of your independent life. Yes. This is a question."

Aerie bursts into unfeigned laughter, and despite herself, a duchess looks at her, for a moment, before angrily turning her head away. "The Broken One always h-helps those in need," the little creature declares when her merriment at his expense is over. "Remember?"

"Exactly," he replies; after all, this is, to an extent, part of the problem. "You are not your god, and Kriemhild is not in dire need; I merely have no further need for her, either. She may benefit from your presence, I believe; you must think of yourself, elf."

Aerie makes a small mouth. "I-I told you already, Sarevok. If you agree, and she does, I'll try to help her. I p-promise you that."

He smiles. "Yes. And thank you."

For a moment, silent conspirators on a common plan now, they watch each other and their shared company— Then, one last thought strikes him. "You— There is an elf by the name of Coran. My sister—"

---

"It is said that, sometimes, if in childhood a sentient individual suffers chronic trauma, the mind dampens the perception and comprehension, though not the production, of emotions. Since fear and aggression are the most vital for survival, the capability to identify them, discern between them and process them persists the longest. If the deprivation does not subside, this, too, is eventually lost. The mind freezes; certain terms, like love, or happiness, alter or lose their connotations; so do lose their meaning certain physiological reactions.

You, Child, have found in your taint an outlet for your accumulated aggression. With this one exception, however, you are nothing short of a blind, deaf and mute fool wandering blithely through a world simply beyond your understanding. This will change. You will learn separation, analysis, interpretation and control. This will take time. We have time."

The spell of silence let go at last; but only one parched word managed to surface in the cage stinking of the madness of a human body.

"Why?"

No answer. There never was.


	39. V: Queenside Castling, 10

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**10**

"I will not fight Minsc for you, Kriemhild. Though I would know why you wish him dead— Do you understand what I am saying? I want to know why you want him to die. Or do you think that he will kill me?"

The smell of juniper and resin fills the air; on a walk, in a forest, a marriage is being dissolved.

Long, black hair streams from under a tricolour, green-red-black uraeus onto a ranger's ashen-coloured scale. The armour hides under a red, partly drawn-back dragon's cloak. The she-spouse has a necklace with a pendant on her neck; a shield with a dragon's head wrought in dragons' scales; the shard of a bone club, a bone dagger, in a scarlet sheath; in another, ruby- and emerald-set, a Calishite scimitar; further, a crossbow on her back; the archers' bracers of a swamp witch upon her forearms; and, finally, below a lupine ear, a red ribbon peeking timidly through the thick, prickly mane, hidden so well that one has to strain, indeed, to notice it— The he-spouse wonders, amused, who has been corrupting his young wife this time.

Yet the transformation is almost finished, inasmuch as it has been possible at all; the jutting jaw with the boar-like tusks must remain, and, in times to come, the half-orc will bemoan its existence as much as an avariel must bemoan her wings' loss, and for much the same reason—

"No!" the lady now, vehemently, states, taking a few steps away from her husband. "This one begs to excuse—" He, in turn, cuts her short. "Speak human. I know that you are more fluent— better— more good in it than you let— than they think."

"Minsc is friend," she then responds, blushing, with her hard eyes shyly on the ground. "That is… not bad? In humans?" She is still fairly unsure; but she adds, "But husband is husband. I have no… devious plan." This is one word: deviousplan. "No kill?" finally, she pleads, "He is friend. And stupid." And she is lying.

Lying, on edge, shuddering; why is she lying? One can always trust an elf to unerringly misunderstand the workings of an orc's mind; nevertheless—why is she lying? To protect her professed friend; or to protect herself? If the friend attacked the husband; if the husband killed the friend, and the friend's defenders—then, he would find himself either in charge, or removed from the wife's presence; and either might be to the orc's mind a desirable outcome. Which one is it? Even when he has forced her to speak a foreign language, the husband still cannot read his wife's intent; this disconcerts him.

He seeks simple words again, instead. "It is good that you understand this much, _halarn_. If you want to, be friends with Minsc. Even when I go. However— But I will not give him the right to you."

His wife, terrified, looks up from the ground at him—and then immediately escapes with her gaze. "Go?"

"Yes. To the cities. That is why there is no need for a devious plan, my wife. I will not stay," he adds, and even now, he is not sure whether this is a promise—

—or a threat. For she panics, "And this one? I? I will stay? Or go? I will be… free?! More good— Better dead than free!"

This, he finds fairly amusing. "As you wish, my wife."

The half-orc starts to retreat when he approaches; retreat, and, trembling, reach for the bone shard, and shield herself with her shield as survival instinct finally begins to combat the lifelong subservience imprint; and yet, in accord with the imprint, spouting orcish, plead, "This one begs to excuse, husband, if there has been any unsatisfactory performance, there will be improvement, much improvement, much correction, the… the weakskin will die, but please, please—"

"Halt," he catches her when she has walked into a tree; forcing her to release the dagger onto the ground below; cursing himself for eliciting the precise reaction he attempted to avoid. Then, in the orcish idiom, he adds, "You will not be clanless, wife. You will be still part of my clan. I told you: I will not give Minsc, or any other, the right to you. I will give it to you, Kriemhild—" A stifled scream. "—but you will still have my name. You will stay here, in Imnesvale, with Minsc and the," a human word, now, "elf; you will tell the humans that I am dead, and you are my," a human word, again, "widow. You are rich, and they will need an interpreter— However, whatever happens, you will still be mine; and one day, when I will be a god, you will be my priestess. But now, I must go. You have been a good bride," he adds, just to make sure she understands she is being divorced, not dismissed; and, somewhere in the midst of the growling, cursing and snarling which is orcish, Kriemhild, tight against the fir tree, calms.

Then, as he releases her, and hits her amiably on the back, and, briefly, unknowingly, holds her close, she starts to rebel demurely, in human speech, "I want not to stay. I want to go with."

He frowns. "I can take you with me. But Imoen told me that you did not like Trademeet. Athkatla is even more crowded."

"I want to… safe. Make safe. Make protected."

"What, me?!"

The idea of a sincerely loyal half-orc bodyguard is to him not unappealing—he had had Tazok, in the past long gone—but, "Why?"

She shrugs, and, with her eyes again firmly on the ground, starts to grunt in orcish, "This one wishes to excuse, but the chieftain Dig Dag is dead. There is no beating. I am… this one must excuse… warm inside."

"—"

Sarevok is fairly grateful himself when his mind picks up the threads of thought of its own accord, and, shrugging lightly, hoarding the moment like a precious stone, remembering what Irenicus taught him, he begins to speak, almost without thinking, and certainly without emotion, "In Imnesvale, you will have every right to defend yourself, within reason. Try not to kill humans, nonetheless, and take good care of Aerie. I believe she has some experience with raw gems; she will help you value your assets. You can rely on her, as long as you treat her well. Do treat her well, and do not let anyone hurt Minsc or her, either—" He eyes her again, his wife-widow-priestess-possession-chattel-yes: Imoen was correct, as usual: _daughter_; she should be fine, with Aerie, and away from the orc-wed husband who does not feel for her; and the must to impress him.

But she had been his wife, once. "Keep the scimitar."

---

"A witch beset by gnolls?! I will beat sense into their heads until they release her!"

"No, Minsc," Aerie sighs. "Umar is an evil w-witch. We must help M-Madulf and his… um, f-friends…"

_**Master, they are—**_

Gathered in the noon light and the heat of Mairyn's forest, on the yellow marble of the courtyard before Amaunator's temple, amidst the gentle whisper of the enchanted fountains and the silence of the birdless forest, the party make quarrel. "No!" the newly instated ranger protector of Imnesvale, unconvinced, protests. "We… would help these beasts—"

"—Beasts?! Why beasts?!"

Silence falls; it is the newly arrived divorcée who has spoken; in the silence, a man's voice roars, "Evil is as evil does! Who with gnolls lives, as gnolls he is!"

Kriemhild, triumphantly, disagrees, "Madulf lives with orcs! I am half orc! But I hunt dragons! I speak! I am not beast!"

"You, too… an orc?!"

All halts, again; in the silence, Valygar Corthala's rare, resigned voice clearly, loudly, intrudes. "Ye gods. Has no one told him?"

No one replies; and the Rashemi is sincerely betrayed; and so, slowly, the gleam which followed her trump card begins to fade from Kriemhild's equally betrayed eyes: understanding supplants hope.

"I— I—" blinking, she begins, desperately; and then, sputtering, she halts; and then, shivering, she starts loudly, inelegantly, suddenly, to sob. "_Halarn_—"

"Shh. Not now, brother," Imoen, freshly come to the succour, scolds to the accompaniment of her girlfriend's transient, scalding look. "Don't cry, Kriemhild. I'm sure Minsc didn't mean—" In the background, through the loud sobs, one can hear Mazzy Fentan's voice, "That Madulf, Minsc, really is decent, for an ogre…" "Yes. Y-you should listen to Mazzy, Minsc," Aerie adds to the sincere, misguided attempt to convince.

Her protector pays her no heed; he rolls a long look over the histrionic ruckus of the assembly, and demands, "Boo, do my ears deceive me?! Evil has crept into the company and hidden among the heroes, like a wicked wasp which wishes to winter in a hive of busy bees?!"

Silence; then, "E-evil is as evil does, a-as you s-said yourself, Minsc… And she did nothing wrong…"

"It matters not," a rook's accent interrupts: Mairyn is with the party. "The lich has caught her prey, and soon, she will reseal her lair. If you are to fight her, my Ranger Protector, it is now or never. We must go."

Over the still sobbing dragon helmet, Sarevok probes, understanding, remembering, recalling, "Her prey? Those three humans?"

Nalia d'Arnise puckers her lip in sudden thought, "Mazzy. Jermien _was_ very specific on this point, actually. It _is_ three _human_ victims—"

Save for his own, the still sobbing Kriemhild's and Minsc's, now frowning as his hamster is consulting him, all heads turn to the dryad. "Mairyn?" a halfling demands coldly.

"Yes," the nymph is reluctant to admit. "The fight began after those," an intent look at the weeping Kriemhild, "_beasts_ tracked three young humans into Umar's cave. Selfish creatures, come to the forest to beat about the bush with sticks—"

The temperature around the party, predictably, drops several more degrees. "Ch-children?" Aerie asks angrily; in the midst of his private consideration, Sarevok decides in passing that his money is on the Andersons; those cretins would be just the kind of idiots— "You—? Y-you _f-forgot_—"

"What?!" Minsc, torn from his consultation with Boo, volcano-like, erupts. "What children?! Now some naughty children nimbly slipped into the story, like small mice which once sneaked into Boo's grain hoard, and even Boo didn't notice them! What children? The gnolls captured children, too? With the witch?! Or a lich? What is a lich, and why is a lich not a witch?! Minsc and Boo must understand!" He looks around desperately, and adds, with feeling, "And is Kriemhild an evil orc or are you not?!"

"I am not!" she yells at him, still crying loudly as only a half-orc can.

Aerie makes a small, determined mouth. "She isn't. And that l-lich, Minsc…"

"She captured the children, Minsc, and Madulf went to help them," Nalia interrupts with irritation, without looking at Aerie; that one, however, is grateful when she adds, "H-he promised to protect the village, remember?"

Kriemhild wipes her tears, and accuses, "He does and he does. And you say you will help, and you do not!"

"He said he would help," Sarevok corrects automatically, considering yet further; a theory takes shape. "Past tense, _halarn_."

This is, apparently, the last grain to sway the balance of the scales; the ranger protector takes obvious umbrage. "Past changes naught! Minsc swore, and Boo makes sure that I always keep my word! But if both little animals and little children are in peril, we mustn't stand here wasting time on idle talk. Onward! Tarry not!"

He moves; Mazzy Fentan, however relieved, still hesitates. "Company—?" she asks the gathered faces.

"Why shan't we discuss the details on the way, Fentan?" Sarevok proposes pleasantly; at her surprised look, he adds, "In particular, I believe, I would rather know what Corthala has to tell to us. Umar is, after all, his kinfolk."

---

"He is right," Valygar Corthala speaks out, out of a sudden, at last. "I don't know how he guessed it, but he's right, Mazzy."

Elementary: his name; his name's history; his business here, in the Umar Hills; and his sheer hatred of the arcane and the undead— It fit, simply, Sarevok thinks furiously as needles crunch under his feet and a spirit is leading the Fentan Knights through her dark forest; and as, further, he hears:

"My family… We have always lived in the shadow of magic. Magic flows in our veins, yet every Corthala who even barely touches this power dies insane. A family tale has it that this curse was put on us by Umar, that she seeps our lives and takes them for herself. We have sworn to destroy her for what she has done to us. I came here to fulfil this oath."

"How?" Mazzy Fentan asks; in the background, one feels, another conversation is taking place, "We will talk when the lich is dead, Boo and you and I! But first, the children—"

"I… thought I trained myself enough for this when I served in the army," the man admits. "Clearly, given what happened… I was wrong. Umar's cave, however, can be reached only for one day in a century. The family records confirm this. I have to try."

"If you try by yourself, you will fail," Nalia decides. "You will need strong protective magic, and a wizard to bring down Umar's protections—"

"It's as well that you met us," Imoen interrupts.

Aerie, while adjusting her life-giving belt, smiles at her. "Yes! One last adventure, a-all of us, together… What would Boo say about t-this, Minsc?!"

The ranger protector of Imnesvale, called to attention, decides, "Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel? The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?"

"Yes. I will help," Kriemhild replies laconically in the hamster's stead. Then, also late to the conversation, she adds, adjusting the dragon on her head, "But lich? How we kill?"

---

—Yet he is a Rashemi berserker, after all.

Minsc in his bull-like charge is, Sarevok supposes, a sight none of his marks have yet seen to survive: a blood-curdling symphony of his red, contorted face, the flashing whites of his eyes, the purple tattoos fiercely alive with the thickened veins of his temples pumping blood through them, rapidly; of, finally, his wide open mouth with its white teeth a-gleam— The Edge of the World, he holds before him, and he almost doesn't seem to control it as he yells, "Evil, meet my sword! SWORD, MEET EVIL!!!"

Yet if the man's nature is feral, then he is strong like an ox, a bear, a werewolf; has the sinews of a deer and the quickness of a lynx; and Sarevok vaguely, remotely, regrets not having had the foresight to fight him before such a happenstance would have disturbed the peace of Kriemhild's mind—

A spell hits this contained fury and falters, now; then, another; the spell-caster reveals herself, almost, and now, Sarevok knows where to search for her with his true sight. His task today is a slow task, a wizard's patient, precise task, a game of chess, an exchange of figures; to tear down all Umar's magical protections whilst Minsc has her attention and Valygar Corthala stalks the shadows in wait of opportunity to strike—

---

—It started with the infernal wail.

"What is it?" Mazzy Fentan interrupted, halting in her tracks and barging on her wizards' fervent discussion.

"I have no idea, Mazzy," Nalia replied, unnerved. They barely heard it: a high tone, in the distance; yet it felt dangerous; Aerie covered her sensitive ears._** This is horrible, master!**_

"The entrance to Umar's cavern lies this way," the nymph their guide announced; the wail accosted them on the bare summit of a high hill dominating the area; before them, a natural staircase of wide, low stone steps led back down into the woods at the mount's bottom. The whole landscape was a perfect junction of the three elements: the wind whistling and wailing in their ears, the earth under their feet, the forest stretching before their eyes until the horizon—

"Look! Imnesvale!" Kriemhild pointed; the small village was easily visible in the distance, a clearing among the dark treetops.

"T-there's so much… air here! It i-is a nice place for a h-house, don't you think?"

"Not with that lich downstairs," Imoen, disagreeably, smiled.

"Yes," Mairyn nodded. "Umar has been a plague of these lands for centuries. I wish you luck, my protector— Remember: you fight her in Mielikki's name. I will aid you, if I can."

She nodded to Mazzy and, in a whirl of needles, disappeared; "Well," the halfling smiled. "Let's get back to work!"

---

The woman's undead flesh has been decaying for centuries; she is clad in the tatters of a purple robe, and in powerful protective enchantments. A ring of fire surrounds her feet, ready to leap and strike any who would touch her; she has been wrapped in a net of illusions; she must be dressed in contingency spells. He starts to weave his own spells to pierce, to breach, to worm his way through her defences; and he wishes again he had Kriemhild and Nalia d'Arnise by his side instead of the two men—

—in the time which has escaped between heartbeat and heartbeat, Umar has scribed three symbols, three runes, three powerful spells: death, stun, fear; has released three her pawns; these now strike, explode into the three men's faces; but the men, too, are protected—

---

"Fentan," the argument started. "The calculation is simple. If Aerie's gods can only shield three of us—" The elf blushed. "I— I really cannot ask for more, Mazzy," she started to defend herself; Mazzy Fentan nodded in appreciation of the point. "I understand, Aerie."

"—and one of these must be Corthala—"

Valygar Corthala nodded. "Yes, Mazzy. I appreciate your support… but Umar is my duty. My blood. My right. I can't yield now. Besides, my presence, or the presence of my body, may be necessary to break the curse."

A trace of fear crossed the small face at the mention of a body; but the halfling only repeated, "Of course, good man Valygar. I understand. Minsc, you must be the second, I know. It is your forest…"

"My dajemma may never end, but this is the end of my dajemma!" Minsc puffed up his chest earnestly; a rite of passage, Sarevok thought resignedly, into manhood, no less; all those tests, and trials, and— What for? What did they ever prove? Did women have them, too? Or was it really like that old, used-up, shoddy adage that a woman was born, and a man one had to become; had to prove that he was trained enough, tamed enough, housebroken enough that he could be released safely into the society at large—

He looked around his own sweet court, and marvelled. Those seven… There was a sort of play, a cheap, mundane sort of play wherein several people gathered in a closed compound; and among them, the sleuthhound sought the murderer— In that play, which was this play, all, in the end, were found out to possess their private secrets; yet the murderer was only one; this was he. Whatever their faults, they were incomparable in gravity to his; that was what, after all, gave them the right to hold trial over him.

Yet the death was still missing. That would be, perhaps, the death that would be the price of his asylum: Isaea Roenall's. He wondered, vaguely, whether Aerie knew when she argued the man's life, that, a slave in Amn, she must have been the man's possession; and whether that word would have altered her Ilmatari's mind—

Himself—were he to be honest with himself, in the end—he, of all, had no right to take offence that a duchess would seek an assassin in a Bhaalspawn outlaw; all that had ever been offended had been, perhaps, his self-love: Nalia d'Arnise had outwitted him. The death itself, meaningless, again, would happen.

In the background, "I understand, Minsc," Mazzy Fentan smiled again; then, the smile, as always, disappeared when she turned to him. "But that was never the point, Anchev. Why must _you_ go?"

Torn from his thoughts, he smiled into the vacuum, tiredly. "Why, Fentan, to get anything done."

---

In piercing her invulnerability, he has committed himself to the fight; the first pawn has been sacrificed.

Umar has found him with her true sight; amidst Minsc's roaring, she is now looking straight at him, a caricature of a witch, gaunt and skeletal, with her dark Corthala skin stretched tautly on her withered frame. She has no nose; she has no eyes; only, drow-like, two red spots lit up deeply in her eye-sockets; and, yet more drow-like, what little remains of her dark hair is all white— In the eldritch light of her fire ring, she screeches out another spell, pointing at him with her skeletal finger. The spell of death simply washes over him as he casts from his mind another pawn, a secret word, and takes a figure her own; a spell shield is down—

---

"I am certain of that."

"Mazzy, _you_ may be certain of that, but _I'_m not, and I _am_ me!" a voice objected, and a private row turned into a threesome as both debaters turned to Nalia d'Arnise, pale and wide-eyed in protest. "Look, Mazzy. He wants to go. I don't."

Mazzy Fentan blinked. "You don't?"

"No," Nalia replied, with some slight apprehension, "I don't. And since I can see where this is going, let me just say this: I, too, know that I'm the best wizard of the four of us. I appreciate your effort to give me the modicum of freedom I asked for. I know that going there on my own would be no different than while having you around. Technically. Theoretically. In practice, I," a bit of hesitation, then, forcefully, defiantly, "don't want to die now, not when I'm about to have my life back."

Not the happiest turn of phrase; Mazzy Fentan blinked and parried, "And what was it until now? A holiday? Yesterday, we fought a dragon—"

Nalia shook her head desperately. "A _shadow_ of a dragon, Mazzy. But this is not the point. Yesterday… it was different. It felt different. It felt _normal_, to do all that. _All_ of us did that. Today… I have a choice, today. And I refuse. I refuse to be called a coward for not going out there, in _three_, being the _only_ wizard, the _only_ one who will _do_ anything, and so, the first _sensible_ target, not even knowing if _any_ of my spells will work at all, on my _first_ jaunt without you, against a _lich_!"

"I…" a small nervous laugh, "I suppose I refuse to be a hero any longer, Mazzy. Don't take me wrong. I know that heroism is an all-or-nothing deal, and that no matter what I did, all I've done will get just wiped out from my account, somehow, simply because I refuse to go in there, into that cave… But I… I just don't care. I suppose I simply don't comply with the insanity standards anymore—" Looking at him, she added, in her normal tone, "There is a spell I have to show to you before you go, Sarevok— Actually, _why_ do you think you'll do better than I would?"

"He doesn't," Imoen laughed, suddenly. "But he wants to play at being a hero. And since Mazzy won't let him…"

"You disappoint me, sister," he smiled back, coldly. "Heroism is, indeed, a word which purports a keen lack of insight; a quality which, I assure you, I have no intent to exercise. As for Fentan… She has already demonstrated a willingness to surpass what objections she may have had to my command. I merely refused."

Mazzy Fentan, one must note, was far from satisfied by his fervent defence of her fair-mindedness. "Why can't Imoen go?"

"Because he has the bigger sword," Imoen, amused, vouched; and he must wonder on whose side his sister was playing now.

"No, sister. Better enchanted. Fentan, if you are willing to place a bet on the life of Corthala and your foster—if these two," a nod to Aerie and Nalia, "are your daughters, then shall we call him, provisionally: your son? If you are willing to bet, then, your son's life, then I will bet you that my weapon is the only one in your company's possession certain to kill a lich."

Then, taking pity on a halfling's dumbstruck disappointment, he added, cheaply, smiling like the bastard he was, "Of course, if you still want me to leave—"

---

"I need a bigger sword!" Minsc is now yelling through his blind rage; Umar pays the Rashemi no more heed than she would a mosquito; and, once again, he must paint himself, futile, in Minsc's place; and in hers, Irenicus.

Another pawn sacrificed, another secret word cast and forgotten, another defence down; his breaching spells will not be turned against him now— Umar sneers. Her next spell reminds him of the elf, of course. She would rather dislike it, he believes; then, he remembers her marvel at a dragon's death.

---

She had blessed them and chanted over them, and asked her three gods to aid them and protect them from evil, and fire, and confusion, and ward them against death; Mazzy had pled to Arvoreen to lend them courage, and the three of them had cast as many protections over them as they had found the means to— Like true Rashemi witches over their berserkers, Minsc had told them, and they had, duly, laughed.

And now, they were waiting for the berserkers' return.

Mazzy was taking the wait the worst, perhaps: now, pacing around the hilltop, shaking her head; now, sitting down with a hard look on her face—she looked ready to leap the next moment, to command them to follow her, and attack in succour, heedless of the fact that they had spent all the munitions they had, all the spells, to protect the men, and would be defenceless themselves; and that she was responsible, too, for the lives of those that had stayed.

She longed to be there, in the heat of the action; and Imoen could not fault her; it must have been long since she had been not, and what Sarevok had said— It must have smarted; Mazzy, casting an errant look at her god-given blade, looked ready to ask Arvoreen why he had forsaken her; for what sins she was forced to put her precious double investment into another's hands, into that man's hands; and now, that she had finally released Aerie, Minsc and Nalia from under her control—

They left her, alone; restless and hostile, she invited no talk.

Herself, Imoen felt curiously little; certainly, not the apprehension she had felt before the fight with Firkraag. Less, perhaps, for that silly, onetime, girlish notion that her brother was invulnerable; she had seen him vulnerable, repeatedly, and never more so than an hour before, on the crown of Amaunator's temple— But the plan was sound, and the best they had; and, at least, it put Sarevok and Mazzy out of the other's sight. An undead wizard, in comparison, was nothing, and worth a bit of crudeness— Even if Imoen swore to herself to find a better sword.

For now, she sidled up to Nalia, sitting slightly removed from the rest, and looked over her shoulder. "Hey."

"Hey," Nalia replied.

"That spell you gave to my brother—"

Her life's first girlfriend looked at her from over her spell book, and smiled. "Khelben's Warding Whip? It's easy, really. I can teach it to you. Even now, if you want. I just… can't seem to work this part out." She tapped her spell book with a quill, lightly.

"Oh." Imoen took a peek. "It's still Jermien's special chained contingency, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Nalia rolled her eyes, "'It's routine protection.' I _can't_ believe I fell for this one—"

"Are you angry?"

She did not love Nalia; and it was easy to bedevil Nalia when Nalia was so stubbornly refusing to see Aerie's point; or throwing in Mazzy Fentan's face the whole sense of Mazzy Fentan's life; or finally, when one was aware that Joneleth Irenicus had cut one's brother open, and left him fresh, raw and tender, and defenceless, and in need to relearn life's cruelty all over again, all the way, from the beginning; and when one had, laboriously, widened that gap and that opening, until what had never mattered began to matter; and when Nalia, it so happened, turned out to be the cruelty's first, inadvertent teacher, seeking a ruthless assassin at a time when the assassin sought a new meaning to his cruelty—

It was less so, perhaps, after one had heard, after that first, shy, inquisitive kiss, "Oh, I'm so _daft_! I'm such a doofus! He told me you—" and had broken that, with another kiss; or when, after that first night, sheer curiosity, really, one woke up to the sight of red hair scattered on a pillow, and then spent some time together, watching, snickering, from the bed, through a glass-pane window, how one's brother tried to reign in some ten village kids, aged six to sixteen, and failed miserably; before moving on to more interesting pursuits—

Nalia's face relaxed. "No. I'm not angry, _minette_. It's just…" Her eyes flickered briefly to the side, where Aerie, turned away from them, was sitting in the grass with Kriemhild, "She will waste herself here! She… Can you _imagine_ her with the kind of people who live here? Is she supposed to marry Vincenzo? Or Willet? They are—" She fell silent.

—not our class, not at all Imoen finished for her, and then felt bad for thinking so; after all, Nalia had not finished, and she had a point. "It seems to be what she wants," she said, instead, carefully.

"Yes. It seems. But she wanted to come with me, too," Nalia replied, and now, Imoen must agree with her. It was not pretty, what Sarevok had done here, half-willingly, half-not; necessary, perhaps. But not pretty. Death never was; not even the death of an ideal, which was always a falsehood.

"Elves live long lives, you know. When we die, she will not have changed a bit," she offered, thinking, Especially when I dieThere was almost no chance of her surviving to a ripe old age, was there? Another thing to do, once they returned to Athkatla: to read up on those journals of prophecy, at last.

She cast her sight through Pangur's eyes; Aerie and Kriemhild were still planning their homesteads.

"I will live in the cave. Below," Kriemhild was saying as she fingered her necklace. "Here… Too bright. Eyes are hurting."

Aerie adjusted her life-giving belt. "I-if Valygar lets you," she laughed. "He's such a strange man! So angry… O-oh, I h-hope they are well!"

---

The noxious spray hits the ranger protector of Imnesvale in the face; all the rainbow's colours, from the finest scarlet to the deepest purple— Head to toe in a sea of marine blue and the green of the light filtering through a forest's leaves, he staggers; and so does Sarevok, amidst bloody red, and sparkling gold, and sunshine yellow.

Corthala, still unseen by her, Umar hit with the very edge of a violet ray, so deep that it was turning black already, the aura of a shadow; whatever it did to him, he, too, survived. Yet now the game finally stops being a game, an intellectual pursuit, a challenge of minds, an exchange of pawns and figures, calmly observed, calmly played—

---

"—she has wasted some of her spells here, I believe," Sarevok said, eyeing the silent battleground, littered with bodies, of minotaurs, and gnolls, and orcs, and ogres, fanning out from the cave's entrance onto the grey, withered grass of the small clearing. Mairyn, the forest's prickly heart, had carefully prevented any possibility of the company's coming to Madulf's aid in time. He wonders why; because Madulf's people dared camped in her forest, possibly.

The ogre mage himself was a statue among his fallen comrades; the others had had less luck. The likes of this place, Sarevok had seen only once in his life, on Waukeen's Promenade; even the Shade Lord's victims had not looked as if they were about to fall into dust the next moment.

"Necromancy," Valygar Corthala hissed. "Horrid wilting." Haz, Aran's wizard, had told Sarevok what the spell he had barely survived had been.

"No finer a place to die than the battlefield!" Minsc cried. "But this… This is no decent witchcraft! We must strike swiftly, so that Evil learns that not even a witch gone evil will escape Minsc's butt-kicking wrath! Follow me! I will inspire you by charging blindly on! RrraaaAAGHGHHH!!!"

"Has he just—"

---

"Dynaheir?! What have they done to you?! Dynaheir?! NO!"

"She is not Dynaheir, you fool," Sarevok finds himself hissing before he begins, quickly, silently, to cast a breaching spell.

Minsc, fatigued by his blind charge, gazes around disoriented. "Dynaheir!" he repeats, eyeing the dark-skinned lich, lowering his sword, "The gnolls… They have not killed you? No. They didn't! They failed! You were always a great witch! And I— I failed you, too! Left you alone, and…" An absent look at his hands— "Boo! Where is Boo?! I must tell him… I must tell him you live! But…" He freezes. "—no. Boo… Boo is upstairs, with my witch. And you— You are not Dynaheir! No! Not my witch! I… I remember. I remember it all, now!"

The sword drops to the ground with a massive cling, ridiculing both the chess players and the play with the sincerity of its emotion; in the corner of Sarevok's eye, Minsc is clutching his head; he looks as if he wanted to tear his eyes out together with the memories as he next howls, like an animal, almost, through his hysteria, "They— They killed her, and then… Then, they gobbled on her and munched her and chomped her, and I… I could do nothing but watch! I had to watch—" There never was a head wound, perhaps; only the last, desperate resort of a mind which found a horror impossible to bear.

Then, the Rashemi raises his head, quickly, and casts one last terrible look around the cave, taking in the entirety of it, and starts to call out for aid through his madness in his throaty tones; a translucent, ethereal crescent materialises in his hands, which he throws, blindly almost, at the lich; it glitters when it touches her, and she stops halfway through her incantation, as though all her magic left her and she forgot how to cast it— But, having performed this deed, he has collapsed, and is sobbing.

A female figure appears; kneels over the man; shrouds him with a cloak; then, for a brief moment, her gaze meets Sarevok's— _I will take him to his women. They will heal him._

_Was this necessary? _he demands in the timelessness of the encounter. _He seemed to be doing well enough on his own._

She eyes him, curiously; and sighs. _The forest here has grown in the shadow for too long… I will need him whole. Not all of Madulf's creatures have been killed, and he must know why he hates them to be able to lead them when your kind awakens._

_But did it have to be done this way? It was… cruel._

_You dare speak of cruelty, Son of Murder?_

_I know it._

The woman eyes him, naked and defenceless before her, in silence. _I… may pity you when your time comes. But the evil has been done already, and it cannot be undone._

_What do you mean?_

_You will be too late. Simply… too late. But now— Help the one who is not yet mine. His shadow awaits._

'_Not yet yours?' You are not Mairyn._

She laughs, in the silver tinkle of Vaelasa's little bells; and he remembers her at last. _You, and your sister both— Do you really think she can take my, or Selune's, place?_

---

—Time returns; the whip-spell, smooth and slippery like a snake, a worm, has slithered through the minuscule hole he managed to bore for it in the firewall; and has brought down Umar's stone skin. Now, she begins to cast a spell again; she cannot; so does Sarevok; he can, at leisure; the lich's protection against enchanted weapons disintegrates.

From the darkness, a katana blade: it pierces the parchment skin and fails to penetrate deeper: a contingency spell sets off, and Umar Corthala's shields, all her shields, are back.

A castling; the king is protected; both kings are protected; neither can act; Umar cannot cast spells; he bears in his mind no spells to cast.

The game… is a draw.


	40. V: Queenside Castling, 11

**Siblings**

**Part V: Queenside Castling**

**11**

The castling is over.

The moment of uncertainty passes; he reaches for the scroll Nalia gave him; Umar, bleeding copiously from her mere scratch, devoid of magic, snarls and turns around to face her third attacker; and then, halts; the _kissaki_, the katana's tip, she has almost in her face.

She reaches to it, unconsciously; then, slides her wasted hands down the blade, putting it slowly to the side, walking around it. "You… with mine own brand… What irony… here… now… at the end…" she screeches and rasps as she reaches for the hilt.

Her descendant jerks the sword, involuntarily, angrily, and then turns to put the blade again between himself and the lich. "The end, Umar?! Yes. The end. This is your end. You will die today. And I, with you. And since I am your last heir, with our deaths, the Corthala will finally disappear from Amn!"

He tries the katana against Umar's protections; fails to pierce them; a tongue of fire rises from the fiery ring around the lich's feet and licks the palm of his hand in greeting.

"You… the last of my offspring… but why? Why?" The eyeless undead face turns inquisitively from the sword to the sword's wielder. "Why… why do you wish for death?" the undead rasps. "You live."

"Don't try any tricks, Umar!" he screams. "I will not be fooled. Just let us have this sorry business over. He must have better things to do than to stand around and watch us come to our terms," he jabs his head at Sarevok as he tries another cut at the lich's waist.

"I do, fool. In point of fact, I believe I second the Madam Corthala's entreaty," that one finds himself replying; the spell, fortunately, he has cast already, silently, when he was behind Umar's back and her attention was away from him. "You neglected to mention that this would be a suicide mission." Once cast, the whip-spell will work by itself; they need only time. Speak. "Fentan will be disappointed."

"Do not drag Mazzy into this!"

"Why not? I answer to her for you, you cretin, and if you die here, she will skin me— However, I would not that I imposed on the family reunion. Madam Corthala. Allow me to introduce myself: Sarevok Anchev. And the madman with the sword is Valygar. There is the small matter of a curse, I believe?"

The lich is, perhaps, quite bewildered. "Curse?" she rasps. "Is that…"

"Yes!" Valygar Corthala yells desperately, and the lich turns to him; "The curse of magic you placed over our family! You will not deny it!"

Shortly, she does.

---

"Amuana was dead, and my lord Amaunator ordered that… that the temple be sealed, magically… with all who were still inside… I… was one of the chosen for this task. I… watched them all from behind the curtain of magic which… I cast…"

Umar Corthala scuttles around her cave, lighting the chthonic darkness with globes of enchanted light, speaking, "Possessed. Turned into shades after death… They begged me to release them… But I… we had to stop the contagion…"

"But the Yellow God demanded more," Umar rasps. "We… we who cast the wards… we were unworthy. Unclean. Impure… Too much shadow… too much of it entered us when we were sealing the temple from the mortal world. The others… they could die. I… the most powerful… the most affected… I… The wards had to be maintained… I was to become undead… To keep them…"

"…I left my child. My sword… But a curse… No. Never… Sorcery is a gift… never a curse. If they were so foolish… if they misused it…" She makes a quaint sound, one which one might interpret as a deep sigh.

"Tombelthen undid the temple wards when they were the weakest," Sarevok notes. The cave, he can now see at ease, is dry, furnished like a small house and laboratory, complete with shelves of books and journals and a potion preparation table; all of it ancient and dilapidated. The aura of decay surrounding the lich is merciless; these cannot be the original items, definitely. Nevertheless, they must be priceless.

"Yes… I awoke… I… found the sacrifice…"

"Yes," Valygar Corthala, still afoot, interrupts angrily, "Three lives a century, is it not, Umar? This was the price of your existence?!"

The red glow deep in the lich's eyes bursts, transiently, into a nova star. "Three lives a century… to protect all… to carry on studies… To maintain the prison… to release the prisoners… Once the danger was contained… they were forgotten… by all…" she adds, with a distant anger not unlike her descendant's.

The Corthalas eye each other in distrustful silence— "So, Madam Corthala, you awoke, found the children— Are they dead, by the way?"

The lich gives him a vaguely irritated look. "They? No… I put them to sleep when… when the orcs attacked. They… they are there." A move of a finger and the door leading to a deeper part of the cave opens; summarily, three Andersons pour out.

"Coo'! Oh, 'ello, mister," the eldest says, "'ere, look, we've been searchin' for you! 'ere be arm'd men in the village, askin' for you, 'ere be!" He appears to be completely unfazed by the presence of a lich; Sarevok marvels at the flexibility of youth. Or, he smirks, the efficiency of his own training.

"For me?" he asks; the eldest Anderson eyes him critically. Then, he eyes him like an idiot. "Tall folk, glowin' eyes. Can't mistake you, mister."

"Some rich folk, Tombelthen be the name," the middle Anderson supplies helpfully. "Says 'e came 'ere in search of 'is cousin. Idras, or Igen, or somethin'…"

"But 'e ask'd for you, too!" the youngest finishes, "Said 'e knows your horses… He talk'd t' the Mayor for _'ours_ an' _'ours_!" He gives him a hopeful look. "You did somethin' bad, mister? You a smuggler, or somethin'?"

"Or something," Sarevok admits, despairing over the state of education in Amn, or, indeed, the sanity of these three: Dirbert, Neler and Valsben, in this precise order. "Now, leave. Do not touch anything you see outside. Go straight up the stairs. There, you will find my sister. Tell her what is happening, and that I will rejoin her shortly— Out," he finishes, pushing the three boys lightly to propel them into motion and out of the cave— Did you hear that, Altair? he asks, privately, his eagle. Do you see them?

_**Yes, master.**_

Make sure they follow the orders. "Excuse the interruption, Madam Corthala. You found the boys, the orcs… attacked, and…?"

---

The boys, to cries of surprise and protest, have disappeared outside the cave; and the lich rasps, "The presence of the wards… It weighs… It weighed heavily on my mind. I… did not feel them… But… the burden of shadow… it, too, was gone…"

"Of course it was, Umar," Valygar Corthala mutters dispiritedly. "We did your job for you. We destroyed the Shade Lord. We did what you could not achieve with your whole filthy magic—"

"We were not unaided, Corthala," Sarevok points out pleasantly. "We were armed by your god, Madam Corthala," he adds, for the lich's sake.

"By… Amaunator?" she laughs, throatily. "The Yellow God…? He… pitiless… He… forgot… He let them forget… Centuries passed… and no one came… No one… helped…" For the first time, her atheist heir looks at her with less than utter animosity.

Then, he the heavy suspicion returns. "But the Shade Lord is destroyed. What will you do now, Umar? Because, even—if—there is no curse, know that I will not let you carry on stealing human lives to feed your own existence!"

Skeletal, the lich looks up at him, weak, defenceless, misleading, "I… My friends… at peace… This is the end…"

"You want to die?" her descendant snorts. "I'll believe that when I see that."

_**Kakaru toki— We are leaving for the horses, master.**_

Fine. "You shared in that desire not ten minutes ago, Corthala."

"I am not undead."

"Your ranger of a friend, I believe, was— Corthala, the Madam's interest coincides with yours. Why not satisfy them both without further hostility?"

There is in the air a rather perceptible feeling of a paradigm shift as the man unclasps his hands from the hilt of his sword and decides, "Yes. Well— How?" he demands of the lich. "Can you die at all? There was some discussion about that," a frankly hostile look at Sarevok, "before we came here."

A ripple of uncertainty through the gaunt skin. "I…" Umar halts. "I… don't know."

---

"There are still vestiges of power in it," Sarevok shrugs as, in three, they consider Amaunator's searing orb, now reduced to the dull, warm glow. "For you, I believe."

He feels a vague pain of separation, somewhere; a feeling utterly inappropriate for its worthless object, his property. "When he armed us, Madam Corthala, your god asked us to return his faithful to him," he adds, languidly. "He promised, in return, to deliver them peace."

"Peace…? Take it… from him?" she looks up at him, angrily. "He… He would destroy me if… if he could… if he had not needed me… How can… I believe…"

"Why should you believe him? What for?" A snort. "Now that's what I call a leap of faith: to believe that death changed a bastard where life could not."

"Gods rarely make amends, Corthala. On equal terms, never."

"The Keep… the Keep of the Eternal Sun," Umar Corthala rasps dreamily, heedless of the private argument. "Light… walking the corridors forever bathed in the light of the face of the Yellow God… Give it to me, Valygar," she demands of her descendant, suddenly. "And live. I… go."

"Umar, I… I wish you luck," says he, in the slightly stiff tone of one acutely aware that he is expected to say something, but who cannot find anything else sincere to say.

Then, a blinding flash follows as divine might meets undead flesh; and when they both recover their sense of sight, Umar Corthala, the last of Amaunator's own, is dead. The light of Amaunator's stone is gone.

---

"Now, it is between her and her god," Valygar Corthala mutters, eyeing the body, as Sarevok summons a light to replace those which disappeared with Umar's death. "And her victims."

"Yes— And you, Corthala? What are you going to do with yourself now?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about this. Follow Minsc's advice, perhaps," the man gives out a short laugh. "Buy a dog."

Buy a dog, find a goddess… There had been such a time in his own life, too; among the Ilmatari; when he found his Father— It was a queenside castling. "No suicide nonsense, I take it—?"

A queenside castling: that was what Imoen called it; the chess king, hidden, to buy time, until the time comes, by the queen's rook; in the queen's castle.

"No… Listen. You won't tell Mazzy about that, will you?"

But the rook; the castle— This is this place. The forest. Mairyn. The queen should be Imoen. But Mairyn is Mielikki's forest; and Mielikki is the Forest Queen, the queen here; here, Imoen is, at most, still only the pretender. _Mielikki_ hid me. What for?

"No. Shall we? I _am_ curious to see whether Fentan will be more pleased that you survived, or displeased that I did."

She cannot reach him. Not yet. She needs him, but she cannot reach him, through that armour of wilful atheism which cries for a deity to follow. And she must know that in Imoen's presence, in my presence, something would change; and I would not even know of the debt, had Mairyn not forced her to help Minsc; and I have not repaid it yet. Not in full.

"I—" Scratching his right eyebrow in the silent, mild embarrassment of the centre of the dim cave, in his leather armour, Valygar Corthala looks, suddenly, again, extremely appetising. The immortal senses scream of jealousy, and chaos, and murder, and change, a taint which must be laid on a man to balance a debt; Mazzy Fentan would be rather beside herself, Sarevok muses with amusement, as, a pawn, the player behind the pawn, aware, ignorant, he bends to kiss the man; perhaps she would even commence a counteroffensive.

The kiss is unpleasant, and, for that reason, truncated; perhaps because it is the dry, dead kiss of a man who lived the years of his life expecting to die soon, and childless, or even celibate— The dissonance dies; he is human, again. "No." "No," the man agrees, as they part; then, "Can you go tell Mazzy that we're done here? I should do something with the," a faint echo of distaste returns to his voice, "body."

—And, of course, this place is filled with arcane knowledge accumulated over however many centuries, and you do not want any wizard around it as you destroy it. "Of course."

With a nod, he leaves; picking up, in passing, his stone.

---

Outside greets him with the bitter end of another tale: Mazzy Fentan walks amidst the victims of a coincidence, a misunderstanding; a dream, a hope. "Aerie said that she will ask her gods to try and resurrect as many of them as will be possible," she says, curtly, without revealing her private opinion on the matter.

"Yes. She would say that," he replies, in a matching tone, across the petrified Madulf and his wilted followers. "Corthala is inside, dealing with the corpse, if you wish to talk to him."

Mazzy Fentan, eternally polite, accepts, with a nod. "Nalia and Imoen left for your horses. They said they would create illusions to mislead that Tombelthen into thinking they are still there, and the boys promised to help them. Still…"

"Still, we had better ride out at once, Imoen and I, and ride through the night," he agrees easily: whatever the name of the current social game, he can play it. "I need a tenday to find the troops to man the castle. Where do we meet?"

"In Arnise. There is a small inn there, The Duke's Head. Imoen knows the details," Mazzy Fentan pauses, unsurely.

"Yes?"

"What happened to Minsc, Anchev? When Mairyn brought him back, he looked terrible. Feverish."

"How is he now?"

"Asleep. Aerie and Kriemhild are with him." Again, Mazzy Fentan very carefully does not reveal her opinion about the half-orc's stay in Imnesvale.

He tells her an equally carefully adjusted version of how a goddess curtailed a wilful forest's scheme to find a protector whom she might manipulate at will; by allowing it to happen, no less; Mazzy Fentan absorbs the information. "He remembered what happened to him?"

"Yes."

There is silence; he eyes the play of light on the stone in his fingers; the halfling bows her head—the wiry hair bounces—and, letting her gaze wander over the withered grass among the desiccated bodies, she tries, again, "It's that eagle, Anchev, is it not? It's your familiar, I think."

"Yes, she is," he replies, mildly surprised that she would care at all for that childishness.

"I wondered how you knew that about the girls— It is true, too, what you said about Minsc. He… is dear to me."

A shrug. "It was only reasonable." If this is about Kriemhild again—

The head rises defiantly, recalling his attention. "As a mother, I'm far from perfect, I'm afraid."

"This is fine, as far as I am concerned. I'm still learning how not to be a perfect son." That came out extremely… awkward. "I hope."

"I sometimes want to," a deep sigh, "just take their heads and smack them together until they listen to me. Or just… yell at them until it hurts."

"Sometimes you do. Don't flatter yourself— Fentan, I recently almost killed a man because he annoyed me with his inanity."

---

The feeling: how to describe it—? Impossible; but herein follows a small, faint, terribly inaccurate attempt at a sample: blood in the eyes, and the sweet taste of blood in the mouth; and a supple, blood-filled body under one's own and over one's own, writhing and fighting, wrestling and brawling; grunting, panting, yelling, gasping; punching, bleeding, kicking, biting; killing one as one is killing it: hands-on, in the blaze of the hellfire which would one day devour one, in a bloodbath, oblivious to the pain, careless, uncaring, laughing— And losing the fight, as one is winning it; for all the carefully self-set boundaries, limits, barriers, hurdles and obstacles: self-set through sheer self-love— They have all fallen.

Yet the winner, bittersweet, knows that he has lost the gamble with oneself, and still loves his loss; for, even if that is the only forbidden thing for which he at all cares, and hence, it carries with it the thrill of reaching for a thing forbidden (self-forbidden!)— This only adds to, and is not the taste; for that sole is real, familiar, and divine; and worth every pain, every death, every moment of dying, of losing oneself— One loves it; that one loves it, one feels, senses and knows with every single fibre of one's being, whether mortal or divine; for one loves it more than one has ever loved anything, or anyone.

Yes. This is how it tastes. The difference between life and murder is ten thousand times greater than that between the beginning and the end of a story.

Spell-casting; sparring; love-making: all pursuits, however intellectual or corporeal, vulgar or lofty—they are all equally fake; all mere substitutes. The killing of lifeless creatures, of dumb animals, of one's foes in a coldly played battle? This has ever been an ersatz, a fake, just like one has never been anything but a fraud of a duke, a nobleman, or a human man. Murder, in and of itself, is real; so terribly, viscerally, fundamentally real, even if only in the memory, the pale reconstruction of the real moment; and the reconstruction, in its essence, as all else, as all he, as all life, always fake. But murder is the only true thing, the beloved thing, the yearned-for thing. Exhilarating.

How can anything human _ever_ measure up to this feeling? Murder is what one was born to do; the one, and only, and true, purpose of one's life. To say otherwise—to say; to preach; to preach that matters can be done by parts, partly, partially, coolly, coldly, from afar, picking the targets to avoid unnecessary deaths, perhaps; or, worse yet, _not at all_— That is wrong, and fake, and a lie. There is no doing things halfway, never— And they must be done. Will be done. Gladly.

The feeling fades. Not today. This has happened; but it will not happen today. Today is another day for the sophisticate, intellectual, hopeful self-deception that all that yearning and all that desire which can never be separate from one's soul, for it is one's soul, one's heritage, one's Father, who, which, always hides within the unconscious, trembling, expectant, waiting to break out in one mad homicidal, filicidal, suicidal rush— That it can be contained and ruled over, long enough, and diverted elsewhere, perhaps; that the taint of divinity need not be the taint of murder; that a choice, any choice, is at all possible; that life, of self, of another, at all, counts.

---

Mazzy Fentan must see the murder in his eyes, because she is smiling. "Almost? My drunken, prodigal son," she laughs, voicelessly, at him. "Imoen was right. I made you a hero. But only through association; don't flatter yourself."

"Fentan," he smirks, sitting down to get down to her level, "if you have ever misunderstood me, then I have not made myself clear enough— I have never been your enemy. And now, you may even rest secure that I shan't want to be your friend, either."

She frowns, and her serious face returns. "Why? We will meet again."

"Briefly, yes. I will stay on Nalia's lands, later; unless, of course, I am thrown out for being a cumbersome guest to have around— Fentan. I intend to reopen my trial. Or, in view of that it never started, open it."

The halfling, looking down on him from the little bump on the ground where she is standing, raises her eyebrows, in passing; and her question is exactly as he anticipated. "Does Imoen know about it?"

"Factually, no. Given that she brought me here, and that we are now leaving for Athkatla together… she must, at least, suspect." He must laugh at the halfling's face. "Even now, you do not understand… Once upon a time, Fentan, on a soirée in Trademeet, I complained to Imoen, rather insolently, admittedly, that I cannot live my life anywhere but among those dregs of the society where I do so naturally belong— And my mercurial sister, the little thief and hermetic psychopomp, the guide of lost souls as wise and silent as a sphinx with the body of a cat and the wings of a swan… She, in her infinite wisdom, delivered me an alternative. Or delivered me _to_ an alternative. To you."

Mazzy Fentan gives him a politely heroic face which tells him clearly that she is still following him, but that maybe, please, he would cut on the exposition, so that they may fight— "See, Fentan, my sister understands, as I do, that I win that trial."

"She does."

He must laugh. "Fentan, I will pledge insanity, and possession, and unhappy childhood, and the indifference of society, and good conduct in Amn— There is no abuse words cannot bear. If that fails, I will buy the judges. I will fight for my life, and for that reason simply, I will win. The only question which remains, Fentan, is what I am to do later—"

"It is."

"Yes," he repeats, watching the play of light on the golden inclusions within the sunstone, "It is. This— You wanted to know what I was doing here. Consider it an essay."

"An essay?"

"Yes. To see if I can live like— This. Fentan, I know my trade. I wanted to see whether I could sell it for my security— Fentan. Where I go, death follows, whether I will it, or not. Even when I will not be a murderer, I will be a killer, because, even cleared in the eyes of law, I will still be—"

"You will be a target," Mazzy Fentan finishes, offended.

"Yes," he agrees. "A target. And a Bhaalspawn. And since I rather doubt the Radiant Heart would let me form a company of my own—"

---

Valygar Corthala interrupts them now, his step springier and a shadow gone from his soul; and he smirks as he studies, with the man, a mildly jealous and possessive Mazzy Fentan. Ten days hence, the last of her children will have left the house. And half a year hence, she might even decide that she has mourned her ranger of a human husband already enough; or that she has long enough already felt guilty that she has not mourned him long enough. As for him—whatever Mielikki wants him for—

He had been walking out of Umar's cave; and that will be Kriemhild's cave, in the times to come: because she will move in here, of course, one can see, with that accurate conjecture which is almost prophecy, in the lay of the land and the pattern of stories; and then, one can see—more.

The pattern; it is nonlinear and chaotic and repetitive; it overlies a matrix of infinite dimensions, each one dimension a chess player, whether god, demon, angel or mortal; or a relation between each pair, or each threesome, or an infinity of them; or a relation between those relations; and so forth, ad infinitum; contained within the matrix, the next step of the iteration; or, better said, every next variant of the next step of the iteration, each with its proper probability of happening. This is, simply, life, an infinity of lives happening at once, a pattern for its vastness and complexity unwieldy, uncontrollable, impossible to master, and therefore, useless; hence, the approximations, the patterns in the pattern, stories.

This fragment of the mandala… For a time, he tried to essay, to assay, to stay separate and au fait; for a time, he was also unwanted, unasked, and excluded, and outlawed; yet, in the end, however reluctantly, he became a part of it, if only while breaking it— What of? A family; a village, running on gossip; a system of communicating vessels; the play of light, and darkness, and shadow; the play wherein he was the sought-after murderer; the tribunal wherein he was the accused; the chessboard side: he, and the seven women, Imoen, Nalia, Mazzy, Aerie, Kriemhild, Mielikki and Umar—

The pattern is Nalia, the best wizard of them all, giving, stalling; it is the pregnant, sevenfold Aerie, praying to her three gods, sympathising, growing; it is Mazzy Fentan, preaching that the end do not justify the means, lecturing that good deeds are their own reward, controlling; it is Umar, protecting and protracting, and killing, and seeking to release; it is Amaunator, releasing his servant, after centuries of service; it is Ilmater, helping the old, dead, cruel god; it is Aerie again, who would have served Ilmater's game in his own stead, and bought a stone he would not have bought; it is Umar again, dying with the stone in hand; it is Mielikki and Mielikki's gambit and Mielikki's future champions and Mielikki's prophecy; it is Minsc, and his old, hidden wound opening anew; it is Boo, and Pangur, and Altair, and the Rule of Threes; it is Mairyn, the ninth to complete the three of threes, a forest of no good will towards humans, or orcs; it is Madulf, turned into a statue because of Sarevok's presence, his chaos-sowing curse and gift; it is Kriemhild, for whom he found the advocate he failed to find for himself; it is, again, Aerie; it is Nalia, who, as she sought freedom for herself, could not understand that one could seek freedom from, in turn, her; it is Mazzy Fentan again, granting her her freedom and her release; it is Mazzy, accusing him that he does not care, enough, for Imoen, for anyone else; it is Kriemhild yet again, feeling a feeling she could not name; it is she, growing, slowly, changing; she and Aerie, the priestesses, the bishops, with Mairyn, the reformed coven; Mazzy and Umar, the knights, servants of their gods; Imoen and Nalia, for now, both rooks, in Nalia's castle—and the castling will continue; and Mielikki, the queen, yet again; and he, hidden in the forest, in the castle, in the pattern— The fractal swirls, complicating, spinning, eddying, whirling, repeating itself, in whole, in part, breaking and reforming, turning into its shadow; changing every instant; dazzling him with the truth of its existence.

He sees it, at last, and grabs it, and clutches it, hungrily, blindly; and because he does, it disappears; and only one, and absurd, answer, is left of it to him.

If I can contain myself, I can contain the world.

---

For now, though, they part, the little woman, and the man, bursting with heroine worship—for now; and the halfling returns as the man ascends the stone staircase. "I now think, Anchev, that you are an utterly amoral creature," she decides, dryly. "You admitted that you don't even care for most people—"

"No," he must admit, again, remembering: he told Imoen this on the roof of Amaunator's temple, and he was not lying, then, "I don't. I find most of them insipid. A wizard—" No: there is no abuse words cannot bear, but what Irenicus told him is such blasphemy as must be reserved only for a court of law. "I tried. It did not work. I meant to be useful, instead."

"However, Fentan," he must smile, now, lest the halfling misunderstand his words for a defendant's final plea, "As I said, you need not fear that I will press it upon your sense of paladin duty to let me become your lifelong obligation."

He needn't have feared. "You will talk to Nalia," Mazzy Fentan replies without missing a beat. "And I— I cannot even say what Nalia will reply to you—" She sighs. "Anchev, justice is not a game. Morality is not a marketplace. And a sentence is not a hobby, not something you pick yourself, to do in your free time! Have you even thought about what I told you? Are you still going to try to kill your…" She shakes her head. "The Bhaalspawn? Your family?"

He had considered that, once, too, he remembers; a contingency plan, formed even before the party entered Amaunator's temple: to use Nalia d'Arnise as his front in Amn, while, quietly, he destroyed his family; as, quietly, he would make Aran Linvail the offer Aran Linvail would not refuse: to avoid the war, the chaos and the bloodshed that is so bad for Aran's business, through Aran's favoured means of efficient murder: finely remunerated assassination—

He must smile at the halfling. "Mazzy, you are a wonderful human being—"

"You, Anchev, on the other hand—"

"—and my question stands: knowing that you are faced with a horde of latent murderers, what right have you to try to preserve the purity of your soul waiting until after they begin to kill? Even Umar— No. Corthala will tell you about Umar. However, no."

Mazzy, still angry, fumes about a sudden change of heart; and, in all fairness, even as she asked the question to match the answer, she is right.

Fighting a prophecy is, as all know, a futile, heroic endeavour; that is why he must search for a loophole which will let live the both of them, both Imoen and him, her mortal, him not; or, if Amaunator be believed, them both, divine— For that, he will need time. And so, just as he contains himself, day after day, waiting for the inevitable failure, gambling— He will contain the world, for as long as he must, gambling to find his answer before the inevitable outbreak of the frenetic, homicidal plague; and do nothing to prevent it; for to prevent it, is, perhaps, to engender it. The siblings must stay alive as, between priests and prophets, Cowled Wizards and, yes: eventually, as late as possible, Irenicus—he will search for the answer he cannot find alone. The world be damned. Mazzy Fentan protect it, if she wants.

It is time to speak to Imoen. Imoen, and Nalia—

Nalia; Nalia d'Arnise, with a healthy instinct for politics and his sister for a consort; Nalia, whose fiancé he would kill, Nalia, the duchess, with her plans to reform Amn; he will have to make sure that Nalia keeps her word to him, and gives him his asylum. And that will be, perhaps, not as trivial an issue as he had initially expected; and, perhaps, he is looking forward to that, too—

That does not take away from the fact that Aran Linvail has his dealings with Isaea Roenall.

Nalia and Imoen emerge from the forest, now, talking quietly, leading by the reins the horses; on top of the horses, riding, are Altair and Pangur. An elf, a half-orc, and two men descend a stone staircase; the larger of the men, helped by the others, and with a hamster on his shoulder, walks rather unsurely. There will be changes, one feels in the grasshoppers' insane song soaring through the vespertine air, as the company all gather for their farewells: changes, in Imnesvale and elsewhere, for good and for ill— "And so, the last ride of the Fentan Knights is over. It may even make for a decent chapter of my saga," he muses, laughing, "once the less remarkable parts are removed."

Mazzy Fentan frowns, and strikes. "Your saga, Anchev? You think anyone will write a saga about you?"

He looks at Amaunator's stone once last time, before he hides it. "Fentan," rising to his feet, he looks down on her, amused, "I will be a god. Of course they will."

**End of Part V: Queenside Castling.**


	41. VI: Check, Prologue

**Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**Prologue**

"You lost five months, _cariad._ Next to this, a se'nnight or a tenday is nothing. Relax. Rethink your priorities," Aran Linvail told Sarevok Anchev on the night before the day when the latter's sister invaded their life again; on the night when the Bhaalspawn first met the vampire Lassal, and when his lieutenant Mook died, and when, with her and Lassal's servant's Gracen's death, Anchev finally obtained the proof necessary for Linvail to deliver to the paladin Sir Ryan Trawl; during a meeting scheduled for the fateful day that followed.

The se'nnight grew into a fortnight, and, in the meantime, Aran Linvail proved to be nothing but what his lover loved him for; a double-dealing swindler, thief, traitor and politician, as power-hungry and untrustworthy as the next man in the world, that being Anchev himself. But in one part, the Shadowmaster was right: the holiday was relaxing, to the point of occasional boredom. And so, Sarevok rethought his priorities.

When he had been—what age? Five and twenty, perhaps: a nice, round number, one which afforded his sister Imoen a fair chance of being her brother's equal in age and yet claiming she had not squandered half of her life doing nothing; and which yet meant that Anchev had been his father Rieltar's whore for only some five years of these five and twenty— Then, at that age, he had almost ruled a city-state. At twenty-six, he was an outlaw, in another country. At twenty-seven, he would rule that country; at thirty, at most, with five years' delay, he would be a god. (He must have been insane to think that he would achieve _this_ before thirty.)

The holidays were over. It was time to return to Athkatla.

Especially in view of the divine haunting which he had just experienced.

The explanation of certain its elements might reluctantly touch upon the three powerful explosions which tore in concert through the three thief guildhalls of Athkatla at high noon of the twenty-first day of Mirtul, year 1369 of the Dalereckoning; hence levelling them with the ground, and killing many an innocent passer-by, and assorted livestock.

Those in the know might possibly comment that the timing of the strikes was far from optimal; the guildhalls, at noon, held barely a soul. Had the attacker planned his action better, he would have struck in the early evening, when the Shadow Thieves, traditionally, dispensed with their tasks for the morrow; or in the morning, when the guild-masters broke fast with their lieutenants— Others, in turn, might wonder if, for the exact particular reason, the killing of ordinary Shadow Thieves was at all the purpose of the strikes. But any such analyses came, if at all, only hours _post factum_; after the Cowled Wizards, reluctantly admitted to the scenes of crime, dealt with the magic spilt from the guildhalls' broken, activated wards; after the fires kindled in the buildings' collapse were first, contained and later, extinguished; after, hence, anyone could enter the guildhalls and retrieve the bodies.

All three guild-masters had found themselves in the buildings at the time of the explosion: Anishai Simonides, Vaelag and Gaelan Bayle. All three perished; with them: a fair number of their lieutenants and bodyguards; all three guild wizards and their two apprentices; what apprentice thieves and their tutors were caught during their lessons; finally, one or two stray priests of Cyric and Mask, drafted by Aran Linvail against his rivals from the city's other major guild.

Of the Shadowmaster himself, there was no word; yet he had been at the hour in his vault under the Athkatlan docks; and that, removed from the building itself and made of steel reinforced with magic, was thought immune even to such forces as had come into play. And there had always been rumours of an escape route, or routes. Rumours. None of the survivors knew where the door, or doors, were, if they at all existed.

Hours passed; the Shadowmaster failed to appear; two disconnected reports flowed in to the temporary command of Pelanna, Linvail's only lieutenant known to have survived the blasts.

The first concerned an account of Bertrand the 'Companion' Jansen, a gnome of definite repute. Minutes prior to the explosions, Jansen had seen a cousin of his, Jan, enter an abandoned house in the docklands area, in the irregular company of a 'most raucous dwarf, my dear, really' and several others, 'not that I would remember their faces. Their noses, for one thing… let me assure you, completely unworthy of notice. This nose, let me tell you, my dear, _this_ nose—"

The second report detailed the finding of an unexploded charge near Gaelan Bayle's guild. It was a masterpiece of clearly gnomish invention; it had been constructed with obvious haste; it gave off a faint smell of turnip.

The second guild war of Athkatla had started.


	42. VI: Check, 1

_Dang! This turned out pretty darn long. Twice the length of the usual chapter, in fact. 'm sorry. _

_On the upside, (1) It's not all angst; (2) It features **actual game dialogue.** I was so amazed, myself, that I decided to reproduce the scene in full, just to commemorate the fact. Even if there's a bit or two that doesn't actually fit too well._

_Happy New Year, everyone, enjoy, and don't forget to review! (I miss the reviews. Am I that bad these days only CrazeeFfan took pity on me and reviewed?)_

**

* * *

****Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**1**

Unsteady, quivering, the two spell-lights illuminated the faces of the two cloaked riders, stretched along the taut necks of their horses, galloping through the fields, through the night, casting their spells silently, in concert.

"There they are!"

"After them!"

Elanor Argrim ground her teeth. _Damn fools. Torm forgive me, but they'd better preserve their breaths for what is to come!_

"They are going to Trademeet!" she yelled over to her company; the wind whistled in her ears, bringing tears into her eyes and making her mouth salivate. "This means that we have half an hour, at best! If they get there—"

"Don't worry. We'll get them first!" her squire, equally short for breath, yelled back. "Look! They are slowing down. Their steeds must be tired!"

The paladins spurred their own horses; and, not a few minutes later, the chase passed the milestone marking the crossroads.

---

The last sounds of pursuit had barely died out when, by the selfsame stone, a horse, quietly, neighed.

There was no horse in sight.

Soon, two sets of phantom hooves started to beat an easy canter down the Athkatlan way.

---

Half an hour later, and a considerable distance from the crossroads, the hoof-beats filled with two horse silhouettes.

An eagle soon moved and stretched her wings into flight from the saddle of the charger; on the jennet's saddle, a cat meowed lightly in recognition and greeting.

"Well. That went well, brother," an acerbic female voice said.

"If my calculations are correct, sister," a male voice replied calmly, "the paladins will be led to think that they have lost us in Trademeet. If not, we still have at least an hour's advantage."

"I meant, brother, the way you masterfully picked for supper the only inn in the vicinity of twenty leagues which had a company of paladins staying overnight."

"Nothing would have happened if your cat hadn't decided to go hunting, sister."

"At least Pangur heard something, brother."

"Apart from, 'I know that cat. He's Anchev's familiar!,' that is?"

"Yes, brother."

A detailed account of a paladins' gossip followed; itself followed, in turn, by a brief silence. Then, the brother of the pair entreated, amiably, "Are you ready for a ride, sister?"

The woman's voice was carefully neutral. "Why do you ask, brother?"

"Because, sister, today is the twenty-second. I must be in Athkatla at dawn."

It was past midnight; they had ridden for ten hours straight; it was a ten-hour ride from Trademeet to Athkatla; she might enter Athkatla freely; they might reunite within the city walls— "You will kill the horses, brother," laughed the woman, "If not us."

---

Later, bards would sing to that wild, impossible ride, of a flight from sun on horses swift as wind, following an eagle's cry and an eagle's sight, of a ride of fate through the ghosts of forests; through villages, still asleep, still oblivious to the Bhaalspawn's destiny—

For now, Imoen was in no mood for poetry. Deneb, exhausted, had foam at the mouth and a wild look in her eyes; they had fed the horses all the potions of fortitude, agility, strength and speed they still had, but the potions had been designed for human bodies; and, in the end, even with magic, it was hard to find energy where energy, simply, was no more— Sore and bleeding, quaffing in passing another healing potion, she threw the reins of the mare to the small, bushy-haired girl—Deneb neighed softly—and followed her brother into the shack where the traffickers were loading the farm-cart.

Fifteen minutes later, they were bribing the guard at the city gates.

"Hold, travellers," said the man, middle-aged and pock-marked, from the shadow of the enchanted entryway, "What is your business here, in Athkatla?"

"I am a simple merchant. I deal in spices and silks," her brother, Bandon, said in a merchant's easy drawl; closing his eyes under his deep hood.

"Spices?" the official beseeched, "Is that a fact? Stand and deliver whilst I search you."

"Now really, there is no need for that," herself, Hanj, she intervened, with a small, sweet smile and a flash of the skin under her tunic as she leaned down from their cart.

The man shot her a look, unexpectedly sharp. "I think there is. Here then, is this some of your spices?" he questioned, moving to the cart's side and lifting a cover.

Bandon, watching his act from an eagle's eye, turned, and whispered slickly, "Why yes, yes they are… though if you were to think them suspect… would a few gold and a sample turn your eye?"

"A few gold, you say?" the man asked, dropping the cloth, and yet frowning as he considered the cart-driver closely. "Hmm… I don't know."

"I think you will find my spices well worth it," that one promised. "It is especially difficult to acquire lotus petals of such a dark hue. Almost… black."

The pock-marked man smiled his rotten, sickly-smelling smile; they all understood each other, at last. "You've a deal."

Bandon gave a nod; Hanj hastened to help; a purse, or, possibly, two, changed hands; and the guardsman, sliding one last appreciative look over Hanj's body, slapped the cart-horse's back. "On your way, then."

"Thank you very much, good sir," Hanj replied smartly, sitting back, and letting the magic in her hand sputter, and the dust within which it was contained, scatter on the wind.

Bandon smacked the reins; the cart moved; they had participated in the most shameful bribery attempt ever heard of; they were in Athkatla; they dropped off the cart where the traffickers had told them to, where Grasshopper and Deneb would be brought in, undercover, rested, later—

"Oye!" the black-haired half-elf overseer yelled at them as they were leaving the fenced-off slum backyard, "It's you! Order is, you're to bunk up in the Mithrest Inn. The boss'll find you."

He crashed the brick wall with a loud yelp of pain. "'The boss?' Who? Who is your superior?" Sarevok barked at him from within a palm's distance. "Tell me. Tell me now."

The pinned man, however wide-eyed, shook his head. "I ain't tellin'. I can't. I don't know. Go to the Mithrest, you folk," he repeated, and nodded slowly, "The boss'll come to you."

"Brother," Imoen implored, placidly. "You've scared him enough. He knows nothing."

Sarevok looked from the man to her. "Yes," he said, slowly. "You are right, sister. Shall we?"

Invisible, a pair of ghosts before whom human crowds parted, they went to Waukeen's Promenade, to the Mithrest Inn; and, once there; once the door of their suite shut upon its keeper, who went out of his way to greet them; on the three set as their body guard—

Then, the siblings, at last, slept.

---

"Step out of yourself, and speak to yourself. Is this not the purpose of this exercise?"

"Oh, please," Imoen, walking lightly by her doppelganger across the ashen fields, replied. "I am not you, and you are not me. Haven't we agreed on this already, Father?"

The other Imoen laughed. "Fair enough!" she said, and changed into Darsidian Moor, the killer of Trademeet. "Is this any better?"

They stopped; Imoen looked around. They were alone, here, now; completely alone. From edge of vision to edge of vision, there was nothing; only the ashen fields, the black sky, and the killing, blood-red, waning Mirtul moon, hanging low on the horizon.

"Why have you brought me here?" she asked. "To see if I can find water on the desert? I can, you know. It will be bitter. In fact, it will taste horribly. But it will not be a poison."

"Unless I want it to," she added, after a moment's reflection; she was also, after all, an assassin.

"Well?" she asked, looking up, into Darsidian's grey eyes. "Why the sudden civility, Father?" When she saw them last, she was on the ground, and her mouth was filled with blood, and her teeth were broken, and— When she had last seen them in Amn, they had been bulging out of their sockets, before they had turned into golden dust; Sarevok had garrotted the man.

"Let us not speak of your brother," her father replied to her thoughts, abruptly. "He will destroy himself. I need not."

"Oh. So it—is—my turn, then," his daughter smiled, reaching for her sword. "I was wondering why no one tried to kill us recently, you know. Who it will be this time? Mazzy? Nalia? Aran?"

"This, daughter, is a farewell," the man announced. "We will never see each other in this place, in this form, again."

Imoen blinked: the words were equivocal, but their meaning was not. "What? I mean— You promise?"

Then, when the dead god said nothing, she asked, "Why?"

Darsidian laughed with fatherly pride. "Never satisfied. Always wanting more. Every last bit Amelyssan's daughter."

He split in the middle, and, just for a moment, there was the promise of something hideous and enormous sitting just under the crumbling, decaying shell; before the world started to wave and warp and twist; and she was left alone in the desert; completely alone.

---

"—No! Don't go!"

"I doubt I will be able to, in the foreseeable future. Unless you agree with that old cretin— Sister."

Her brother's face was a tired nightmare; on impulse, she reached to it, and started to heal it. The familiar coolness was all there, and without the pain; she blinked.

"I can do it," she said, surprised by the feeling of her own words. "He wasn't lying. He's let me go— Don't be jealous, brother," she reprimanded the sudden scowl on the face she was healing, "I have no idea what possessed him."

The man watched her closely, and she could almost imagine a distant reflection of some genuine care in the inhuman eyes. "Then you are fine," he said, at last.

"Yes, I am." The bed they were sitting on had curtains, she suddenly noticed: thin, muslin curtains, waving on the breeze, appropriate for the nearing summer— She took her hand off her brother's face. "For now, at least."

Sarevok stood up from the bed; and so, mildly startled by this sudden hurry, she grabbed his hand, "Wait. You wouldn't have heard of someone called Amelyssan, would you, brother?"

He smiled, briefly, and looked down to her, again. "No." A light glimmer of curiosity passed through his eyes. "Who is he?"

She shook her head. "No one. Just a name— Wait." Whatever hour it must be, her brain was still in slumber. "You said that he told you something, too. What did he tell you, brother?"

For a moment, her brother's eyes glimmered, more in curiosity than anger. "Why, nothing, sister," he said glibly. "Merely that he enjoyed seeing so much love between his children."

She dropped the hand as if it burnt her, and swore.

He folded his arms, and laughed. "My thoughts exactly."

---

She knew his airs; she knew his scents; she knew his kills, and how he cast his spells; broke him out of prison and witnessed how he broke down, himself; and rode fifteen hours for him; and compared other men to him; and came up, in the end, with Nalia d'Arnise—

"No," she shook his head; just as he, evidently having reached the end of his own list of guilty admissions, said, "If I—" and stopped.

"No," she repeated. "Not like that, brother. No offence, but— No."

Quite visibly relieved, he replied, "The feeling is mutual. No one need ever accuse me of excessive love for my kin, sister."

"The truth is— The truth is that you just sort of are there," Imoen moved forward, scowling with the full determination of a person prodding a rotten tooth.

"In the back of the mind, I believe," he heard it put forth from under the wall where the man was now standing; after a careful examination of the daring thesis, she decided, "No. More to the side, I think. The right side. In the temple."

"Really?" Her brother must devote some thinking of his own to the issue, because it took some time before he replied, wondrously, "Perhaps."

Silence fell; until, at last, Imoen said, "Tell me something about yourself, brother."

He scowled; and replied, exactly like that first time in Trademeet, "No."

It was, perhaps, only the fortuitous knocking which saved them from the incipient row.

---

In mutual agreement, they cast their stone skins and small invulnerability globes; as the protective magic slid over her, enveloping her in a grey and silver sheen, Imoen unsheathed her sword, and, standing by the door, commanded, when her brother was himself ready, "Enter."

It was only their hotelier.

The Mithrest was the best inn in town, and theirs, a luxurious suite: it took the whole upper floor, save the small antechamber where their guard were staying, and was softly decorated in filigree, lightwood furniture in tones of lavender, gold, cold yellow, and cream; despite herself, Imoen still felt some small shame on seeing how much dirt they had brought in to the place— Yet she would lie if she said she did not enjoy the comfort; and the Shadowmaster, whoever they now be, was paying.

The inn-keep, himself, Pugney, was fat like Winthrop; on that, the similarity ended. Winthrop would never stoop to such dignified, affronted civility as now greeted her, with the man—

"Afternoon, my lady!" A bow.

(So, it was already past noon, Imoen thought; behind Pugney, the scarred face of the muscle who called himself Booter nodded to her: they were in the clear.)

Another bow. "Afternoon, my lord! The porters have delivered your effects, and the word that your mounts are fine; I do trust that I have not overstepped my boundaries in conceiving a small meal to accompany the joyful news— I would thank you for keeping your attendants from my larder, my lord," he bowed, again; and again, "My lady."

Imoen frowned. Servants; she would have to learn how to deal with servants, too— "Attendants?" Sarevok frowned accord.

"Yes, my lord. They have taken to the drink," said the man, stiffly, and clapped his hands; Pangur, carried in two fingers by the scruff of his neck, had his mouth still in cream, and a wistful look in his cornflower eyes.

**She fought f'r me,** he meowed, dreamily; and, indeed, Phealos, his carrier and the siblings' second lookout, was still bleeding from his arm. Altair, herself unbound, was walking behind, eyeing the man askew, sharply. _**Tell him to let the Tailed One go, master… Please? I don't want to have to hurt him.**_

"Let him go, Phealos," she hurried to say, herself, "Hello, Altair."

She fought for you, and you're pulling her on the way to crime, Pangur, she thought. Feel free to be ashamed of yourself.

---

The food was not poisoned, and fully justified the Mithrest's claims to the best cuisine in Amn: fowl, for the most part, served the Maztican way, in chocolate.

The nightingales' tongues, on their part, were a native Amnish dish; she tasted them, but, in the end, there was too much deeply-seated guilt towards people like Minsc, or Cernd—or, well, Kivan, or Jaheira— Perhaps, she thought suddenly, now that she was in Athkatla, she should buy something for Ashdale. She hadn't really been a very good godmother. Should she, or should she not? Would Cernd welcome an unexpected souvenir? Yes, being Cernd, he probably would, but that didn't mean—

The novelty of the idea was thundering; she was still munching through the issue when, over the fresh strawberries served for the dessert, her brother started upon the small talk. "When you go to see the guilds, sister, I would that you had your look at the Copper Coronet."

The Copper Coronet. Cernd had told her about it. The Coronet was an inn, in the slums, where people killed themselves smoking the herb which had paid for their way into the city this morning. "Why?"

"To take a letter. We will have business there, once we are done with Bodhi," Sarevok, happily, smiled, and the tide of Imoen's thoughts must shift completely to less carefree venues.

There was almost no question if the concerted explosions had been Bodhi's work. She was a vampire, and Irenicus' sister; and Ryan Trawl had not caught her. "You think, brother, that Aran will make us go after Bodhi?"

"I promised Lassal that I would speak to her," he reminded her, lightly, feeding his eagle; and she smiled. "Tell me, brother… Bodhi said that she wanted to join us—you—against Irenicus; but then, she sent Safana and Coran after us. And Lassal."

"Yes," he nodded. "I have been thinking that myself, sister. She wants to take over Athkatla."

"But you still think that what she really wants is our notice," she finished. "I see your ego is back in place, and safely secure, brother— You know, we still don't know if Aran survived." She took another strawberry, and embarked carefully upon the most delicate matter. "And it would be better for you if he died, wouldn't it?"

For a moment, she almost thought that the play had failed. "Don't wish him that, divine sister," her brother said, without amusement, in the end. "I have already been told that I would be too late."

---

"Give this to Garoll; you will find him at the Coronet's bar, drunk. Don't worry; the man is half-dwarf, and his drinking pays his tabs— However, do watch out for the barkeep, Bernard. He may look like a lifeless lump of lard, but he is Lehtinan's second and a Harper agent," she heard when, dressed in her most fatigued, black and red clothes, she was leaving on her scouting foray, with Pangur at the heel and, overhead, Altair.

"I will," she nodded, amused, "You will be fine, brother."

That would be true; Sarevok was his cultured self again, with his smug, indolent, calculating smirk; and she—

Athkatla! The city changed her, too: she must laugh as she left the inn, to inspect her cat's new turf and her own old haunts— She had barely started to learn its ways before she had left it, and the morning sleepwalk had offered little in the way of sights. But now, here, it was Mirtul, a warm afternoon, and she was nothing but a young, urbane thief, laughing.

To the right, the scaffolds, busy with architects and masons; repair had already started on the caved-in section of Waukeen's Promenade; to the left, the Ilmatari shrine where Nalia had taken Aerie, a time ago; far in front, on the other side of the quondam hippodrome, the veranda of the tavern where Edwin and she had eaten, once. Slightly down and to the right, Ribald's Adventurers' Mart; up a white marble echelon, and one found oneself in Galoomp's book shoppe—

And everywhere, everywhere, the people, crowding the narrow alley-walks between the bazaar's colourful tents, stalls and booths, buying and selling, haggling; a noisy, unruly mob, a mob of many-tinted heads; and the smells—the smells! They hit her, unawares, as she left the cosy, soundproof, courteously fragrant bubble of the inn; and she must remember: Amn was a merchants' nation; and this, her capital; and she must laugh, again: she was back.

She set out on her hunt through the spell-works and the spell-shops; and found, to her no small pride, that her collection of combat incantations almost exhausted the local booksellers' general stocks; for more, she need speak to those who did not fear the Cowled Wizards' wrath; or to the Cowled Wizards themselves. She saw the art; the clothes; the jewels; the plants; the animals; the fixtures, the weapons, the cosmetics, the spices and the oddments; still fascinated by the fact that she had possibly not only herself, but also a godson to shop for— Why not buy something for Nalia, too, while at that? Or, she smirked, Sarevok; something that was not useful, not a spell?

But time moved on; she looked at the sun; she had lost time enough already; she had a task to fulfil; she had better not remain outside after sunset. But she would not go across the river, to Mae'Var's guild, where she was known, where she might, possibly, need to explain her sudden disappearance, and where what passed for her Athkatlan acquaintance had lived; nor to the noble's district, to the Radiant Heart, to ask Anomen Delryn's health— Instead, she dove into the Athkatlan slums, where the Copper Coronet and Gaelan Bayle's guild lay.

Dove: for one's eminence in Athkatla, one learnt soon after entering the city, stood in direct relation to one's eminence in Athkatla's society. In Baldur's Gate, the boundary between the rich and the poor had been artificial: these were the city's inner walls; here, it was natural: it was the river. The right, northern bank was a cliff; there, the government had its seat and the gods, their temples; there, the ennobled lived. Wealth devoid of nobility earned one, at best, a house on the massive bridge which joined north with south; less wealth, around Waukeen's Promenade, or around the city gates; less wealth still, in the docks, on the detached promontory which lived its life forgetful of the land, and turned towards Umberlee's sea; for those who could not even afford that, Athkatla had a place in the slums; and the slums lay landwards from the bridge, in a soft, silt-bedded, sediment-rich river's bend on the southern bank. It was impossible to fall lower than that; even the outlets of the sewers crisscrossing the northern cliffs lay level with the slums' rooftops.

One could move easily around Athkatla without once entering the slums; from the north, through the bridge, an avenue led to Waukeen's Promenade; from Waukeen's Promenade, eastwards, another, directly to the city gates— The poor boroughs were squeezed between them, the river, and the city walls; just beyond the old graveyard nestled in the corner of the two largest venues.

Imoen gave it a brief look as she passed it by; the tale went, the cemetery was itself the nest of Bodhi's vampires; but she remembered it better as a place of her picnic with Edwin.

---

**Rats!**

_**I agree. The classical comparison would be, I think, 'a hive of scum and villainy.' We must be cautious.**_

Many of her fellow perambulators did look the part of coupling Kriemhild's build with the amnesia that any half-decent wizard in Athkatla had a license to kill; Altair's comparison was, nevertheless, unfair, partly. The part about the hive was, wholeheartedly, true.

The people lived their lives on the streets all over Athkatla; drunks and merchants, sailors, whores, thieves, children, and mere passers-by; people quarrelling; people eating; people killing; people hanging their laundry— Here, for the poverty, the habit was taken to the extreme. The sheer energy of the crowd around her was staggering; and its numbers, not in any way related to the available housing space.

Buildings, in fact; or what little of them she could notice under the masses of stairs, stairways, ladders, attachments, add-ons and attics— Precisely: buildings here were at best, nominal, and time-honoured, never; they must be built and mended according to the inhabitants' current needs; oft one layer on top of another; certainly heedless of the needs of traffic; they almost looked thrown together haphazardly from whatever material was at hand— Unless, that is, the locals had learnt the art of growing that particular unseemly alloy of wood, stone, brick and clay in the rich river silt supplied by the last thaw's flooding. The river and the village must be ancient enemies here.

The village: for the air of the slum was distinctly rural, in both figure and letter: it was, perhaps, as if someone had taken an Imnesvale of ten thousand souls and framed it within this urban catastrophe. They were mobs of people here, yes; there were also mobs of animals. Two large, red specimens of the bovine folk greeted her, mooing, from their pen; a peasant's horse neighed from the distance, reminding her of Deneb; chickens scattered under her feet, frightened by Altair's shadow, and fat rats scurried about freely, unafraid of Pangur's eager attempt to hunt them. Dogs howled; cats meowed; goats and sheep, too, added their bit to the cacophony— Every spot which could be, was used. A midden was blocking the path to a well; a vegetable garden of ten carrots, all, occupied the flat rooftop of a lean-to; and that quintessential gnome invention abounded in the doorstep: the gnome's tree, the bonsai turnip.

Gnomes, there were surprisingly many; gnomes, and halflings; even in the crowd, the children of their large families knew enough to keep between themselves the proper distance. She was not a politician; but she had once heard idle theses about the inherent stratification of an ostensibly egalitarian society; euphemisms regarding the virtual self-government of certain communities; that, now, took life around her, as she walked through the crowds of, some said, fiddlers, and brownnoses. And it fit, she thought; it fit the vertical topography of the capital: low folk in low places. And, after all, it was not as if they had to—stay_—_here; she even knew of one halfling family that had even reached as far as the bridge area in their housing; of course, none, save the servants, lived on the government side; but then, many humans didn't reach that far, either, so they shouldn't complain; in the end, this was not Trademeet, where the Fentan family could get away with—

She turned around, and mentally cursed a world which did not even let her put cheerful halflings in the cosy position of the victims; not for one moment. Mazzy would be ashamed of her.

There were five of them; young adults, though they looked like children next to her; two with slings, three with—she could only call those, shivs. They were filling the street, smiling cheerful, toothy grins with small, white teeth which reminded her of certain types of fish. The crowd, mysteriously, disappeared; apparently, even her worst clothes were too good for this place.

At her feet, Pangur opened his mouth, dropped the rat he was carrying, puffed himself up into a fur ball, and, slowly and studiously, spit at the intruders.

"Don't kill," Imoen warned.

The halflings laughed, and she felt quite happy to clarify, "This was not to you."

---

Screeching like a banshee, Altair threw herself from the shingle between the halflings; she didn't use her talons, but the massive wings sweeping into their faces as she flew between them were enough to make them lose their balance.

You stay here, Pangur, Imoen thought, meanwhile; her cat cast a betrayed look at her, and disobeyed.

Well, it's your problem if you're not listening to me, she thought as she fired off her spell and a mass of grey, viscous fibres burst out squarely between the halflings, covering everything in the narrow lane with strong, sticky strands. The halflings, caught in the web, which clung to their hair and faces as much as it did to their weapons and clothes, could not move; however wildly, like flies, they trashed.

Nor could Pangur, stuck halfway between her and the nearest halfling. **Yuck! My fur! Why didn'tcha tell me wha'tcha were gonna do?**

Come for you, you mean? Imoen thought, nastily; then, she sighed with resignation. Wait. I'll get you out.

She pulled out her Arbane's sword, and stepped into the grey mass; the sword's magic was such that she could herself move in the enspelled area unhindered. She got to her familiar, and cut around his own cocoon; she knew that the moment she lifted him, he would become a part of her, and the spell would ignore him and let him go completely— Nevertheless, the look of perfect distaste on Pangur's rosy-pointed muzzle as she set him on her shoulder was deeply satisfying. Will you listen to me now? she thought, smugly.

**Must clean m'self**, her cat muttered, eyeing with sheer horror his impeccably clean, goo-less fur.

You're welcome, Imoen thought; then, she approached the closest halfling, eyed him critically, and tore off a strip of the grey mass from his face. "Which way to Gaelan Bayle's guild?"

Even with his mouth freed, the halfling proved unwilling to talk; but he moved his head, slightly.

"Thank you," Imoen replied politely. "The spell will vanish in some ten minutes. Oh, and, Altair," she said, looking up at the golden eagle, now perched again on a nearby roof. "Thank you."

_**My pleasure.**_

---

It didn't take long for them to arrive at the guild. The land was sloping gently towards the river; but, as the river must flood the slum, the slum turned away from the river; she could see it nowhere between the accumulated buildings—

Then, she saw it, both at once: the guild and the water.

First, however, there came the sign-post: the ship: an old carrack, run aground and built upon and around; next, between the ship and the raised, octagonal structure she was passing, there came the wide gap; through the gap, one could see the water, and the yellow, sandy cliffs on the other side of town.

She did not approach closely. Some people—Shadow Thieves—were still walking around the rubble left after the previous day's blast.

If it had been an explosion, it had been a very contained explosion, she thought, absently: the ship had a large, charred hole in its side, as though it had taken part in some belated sea battle; but the turnip-reeking tower on the other side was not damaged at all— In the tight mass of buildings, the open space looked very much like a wound.

It was impossible that Bodhi did that just to call out to the pair of them; she wanted to take over Athkatla.

On her shoulder, Pangur interrupted his intent grooming. **Whoa. Tha's tha' nutty wizard's sist'r yer talkin' about 'ere? T'vamp?**

The look Imoen gave her cat as she turned on her heel, and to the Copper Coronet, was such that Altair decided to keep her opinion on the matter, to herself.

---

"Two entrances. Two back doors. The left one leads to a brothel, on the mezzanine; the right one to a Black Lotus den and the arena stands. All of these are dead ends, but there is also a hidden door near the Lotus place. It's a service thing, leads to some sort of cellars, I think. Five guards visible, so, I think, some ten more hidden; those I saw armed with bows, staves and swords. None of the stuff looks much enchanted, although it looks like some of them can cast easy magic. Lehtinan has a pretty fancy sword, but I think it's more for show than use, and I saw nothing on Bernard. Two or three waitresses, ten prostitutes, none of them armed, but they use animals for pit fighting, dogs, panthers and wolves, and the trainers are sick, they say, so they may release them— The crowd… I'm not sure about them. Forty or fifty, most of them look like they couldn't care less, but, I guess, two or three might want to join in if there's a fight, so there's that to count with."

Sarevok scratched his neck, moved lightly on his bed, put away his book, and replied, carefully, "I see, sister. But why are you telling me this?"

She smiled, winningly. "Because, brother, you told me that Isaea Roenall is a slaver I would love to kill."

He smiled, too, and returned to _The Sisters of Light and Darkness_. "In Sembia, sister, slavery is not illegal."

"I'll put it in my diary," she assured him as she plopped down on the cream muslin next to him. "In Amn, brother, it is."

"For economic reasons, yes," he replied as, absently, he pushed the plate of cream cakes towards her. "We will not go there tonight."

"No," she must agree; the sunset was nearing, and she did not have his protection. "It's a good hiding place, you know? Almost as good as this."

The smirk did not desist. "The baths may be worse, I believe."

"The hostesses may be better."

It was one of those pretty girls with the tired eyes and the smeared make-up who had told her that the children were held behind those hidden doors, where the animals were also kept.

---

"Some may even be elves," she added, viciously, fed up with the indecent haggling; then, on seeing the sudden, utter lack of argument, almost grew ashamed of herself again.

"No, sister," her brother repeated, stubbornly, in the end. "Not today."

"But we will kill Roenall," she summed him up. "Tell me, brother. When I returned from Imnesvale with the horses, Mazzy and you weren't yelling at each other. What happened? How did you manage to win over the Iron Halfling?"

The smirk was deathly cruel. "Easily, sister: through mutual agreement that I would never be good enough for her— Is that not enough, for a certain type of women?"

She said nothing; and so, he finished, "It certainly sufficed to make Fentan promise, with all her customary charm, that she would pray to Arvoreen that I learnt to be a human before I became a god— And just, as it so happens, as I was planning how we would kill Isaea Roenall, for my sheer personal gain."

She laughed, then, remembering the meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force; and also, because, although far too much had, it had not all, like water off a duck, slid off him; clearly, he was not going to pretend that his sudden attack of existential angst had been nonexistent. But— "Why not today, brother?"

He cocked his head, curiously. "Tell me, sister. If twenty humans is all it takes, then why haven't you solved the matter yourself? You know that the geas prohibits me from killing Aran's people."

She frowned; and then, sighed. "Fine, brother. Tell me— Oh. By the way. Before you do. I gave Garoll the letter, and the rumours are all true."

And, she thought, privately, looking at the book, I completely forgot about that primer for Ashdale.

---

"It's a triangle," he said, drawing out his greensteel knife. "The first base," the tip of the knife touched the bedcovers, "is Lehtinan and the Copper Coronet. They provide the floor for the entertainment, and peddle the merchandise to small, individual customers. This accounts for some ten to fifteen percent of the overall traffic."

He gave her a brief look; she nodded. "Go on, brother."

"The wholesale," the tip of the knife moved, tracing a line across the muslin, "is dealt with by a man called Haegan, the leader of a heretofore-unnamed mercenary group, counting about fifty heads, with small bases scattered around the slums, the gates and the docks."

"Shipments into and out of the city," Imoen nodded, again. "I get it."

"Finally," the knife moved again, "Roenall, as the vice-commander of the city watch, provides cover in events of legal trouble, for both Haegan's men and," the tip returned to the start, "Lehtinan."

She considered the triangle with a frown. "And where do the Shadow Thieves come in?"

Sarevok hid the knife. "Nowhere. This is the first problem."

"For Aran, certainly," she retorted mechanically. Looking up with disbelief, she repeated, "Nowhere? Really?"

Her brother shrugged. "Aran has his separate dealings with Roenall, over the smuggling of jewels, and Bayle takes his usual bit off Lehtinan, for floor space. However, beyond that, sister, it is a completely independent enterprise."

"How did it survive?" she asked, out of sheer curiosity. "The profits must be enormous."

"You may as well ask why the Harpers aren't doing anything about it, apart from installing their agent to monitor it; or why, if the scheme functions so well, it wasn't in place six months ago," he replied, scratching his beard, pensively.

She blinked. "Yes. Mazzy was in the Coronet half a year ago, so they couldn't be doing it back then…"

Sarevok tore away from his private musings, and looked at her. "Yes. However, to answer your question properly, sister: they pay their tithe; they keep to themselves; they never try to infringe on Aran's business; Aran tends to consider the trade too much trouble for the coin; he had problems with me; he had problems with Mae'Var; he had problems with Bodhi; but, mostly, they forced him."

He smiled, briefly, clearly coming to a decision. "Aran had a man, and a mare, once, before I met him; three years, each. One day, which must be around the time when I… arranged for Ulraunt to arrest you in Candlekeep—"

"You mean, when you framed us into killing your foster father," Imoen pointed out, surprised less by the sudden change of topic than by the shameless shirking of the subject. "When we first met, actually," she added. "You and me."

"Yes. I was not sure if you would remember; although I now do seem to recall the matter of a ring— However. The man went riding on the mare. The mare's head, Aran found in his bed, one day, when he awoke. The guard were all left dead on the road. The man disappeared, and was never found."

"And Aran—" Imoen said, although what she really wanted to say was, And you—

"This is the second problem, sister," Sarevok smiled, winningly. "These three," he pointed at the figure still impressed in the bedcovers, "are cretins. But, after six months, Aran still doesn't know who is behind them."

She frowned, concentrated on the subject matter, and promptly called his bluff. "Then the third problem, brother, I guess, is, why, if these people are so powerful, they stopped on slavery. If the trade's so problematic Aran says it's not worth the coin."

---

"Now, Roenall himself may either be a pawn, or he may be an important pawn," Sarevok was saying now; the cream bedcovers were now full of colour-coordinated crumbs, it was getting dark behind the window, and, since they were still idly waiting for 'the boss' to come to them, they had, reasonably enough, decided to get mildly drunk before going to sleep. "However—"

"Yes," Imoen sighed, scratching Pangur behind the ear. "I get it, brother. We have enough enemies for today. Or rather. You have enough enemies. I just don't have enough friends—" A thought struck her. "Do you think Valygar will decide to come with Mazzy, after all, now that he's free of that curse of his?"

"It never existed, sister," her brother pointed out, _de excelsis_.

She laughed. "Right. So, tell me, brother. Admit it. Why did you send me to the Coronet, if you knew how I would react?"

She felt a nudge; she put out her hand and found her glass refilled to the top with the cherry liquor. "Because, sister, you told me you would kill Isaea Roenall, and I was interested in your assessment of the Coronet's defensive potential."

"Null, as far as I'm concerned," Imoen said, with such sudden, hateful vitriol she found it herself terrifying, "I have no idea how we'll deal with Bodhi if we need to fight her, or with whoever is behind those three stooges, but the Coronet itself is just a nest of rats."

"—And because I needed you to carry a letter," Sarevok finished calmly on the bed above her, and she groaned. "What was so special about it? Couldn't Booter take it?"

She heard a lightly startled, "Nothing. You didn't open it?"

"Today, I'm full of surprises," Imoen muttered.

"—It was merely a standard call to all unemployed mercenaries in the area."

"What?" Suddenly interested, she shifted on the warm, fuzzy carpet to catch a better sight of her brother. "You mean, one of those silly '_To all those of evil intent'_ things you were sending after Irene all over the Sword Coast?"

"I doubt," she heard a yawn: those fifteen hours of riding were making themselves felt, again, "d'Arnise would appreciate that particular phrase, sister. Apart from it, however, yes. We need soldiers. Samia, Dennis from Riatavin, Tarnor Hatchetman, Korgan Bloodaxe, Valeria… Mencar Pebblecrusher, perhaps. At least some of them must be around. And the Coronet is the best place to find them in Athkatla. As I am sure you have noticed, sister."

The dark inside of the Copper Coronet stood before her eyes again: the low, sloping ceiling made of pugged clay which may have been whitewashed, once, but, for decades, had been not; the smoke-stained walls; the straw on the floor, under the broken, mended furniture, with its laughing, drinking, vomiting crowd; the arms of the bouncers and the patrons, glittering in the light of the oil lamps; finally, the doors, leading to the places where a perfectly average, if seedy and downscale, tavern, hid its true darkness— She opened her eyes, and saw the cream, the cool yellow, the lavender, the calmly elegant decor of the Mithrest, lit by the enchanted globes of golden light.

They were really both appropriate hiding places for the bastards who were demigods.

On the bed, and perhaps knowing the course of her thoughts; had they not talked about the matter, over and over again?—her half-drunk, half-asleep brother smiled. "Garoll will find the hirelings while we speak with Aran and—"

_**Check the Dark Queen.**_

**Naah, hun'. Hun' rats.**

They still didn't know whether Aran Linvail was alive, and, if he were, how they would deal with the man who had tried to offer her her brother's job; Imoen laughed.

---

Sarevok was watching Altair and Pangur with look of mild intrigue; at last, he shrugged lightly, and turned back to her. "However," he drawled, formally, and Imoen, who had not been aware that there was anything to put up a formal 'however' against, felt her hair bristle. "I am curious sister, why, in the course of our prior conversation, you have yet failed to refer to the fact that you have once liberated my slaves."

In the alcohol-induced slackening, the truth escaped her before she had the time to think about what lie would fit the best.

"Because I forgot."

Sarevok cocked his head, and flawlessly presented her with the easy way out. "Irenicus?"

Irenicus had made her forget many things, but not a bloody large underwater mine filled with rake-thin bodies; and, in the middle of all that, an old dwarf cursing with his dying breath his friend Rieltar Anchev. With typical dwarven stubbornness, Yeslick had survived long enough to tell them how to flood his clan's ancestral mines; that long, and, his task fulfilled, not a minute longer. That had been one of the few times when Imoen had seen Irene cry.

Now, she wanted to bang her head against the side of the bed, repeatedly. It was always the same story; always, always the same story— "No," she said, in the end, through clenched teeth; then, pled, almost, "Tell me something about yourself, Sarevok;" just so that I don't hate you.

He was watching her with such an unearthly scowl that she must interpret it, on some level, as, of all things, pity; she did not want his pity. She had chosen this idiotic spot herself, had decided that she was smart enough to have it both ways, two ways; two opposite ways, at once— And now, in the mob of new things, new people, new experiences, she forgot. Not, forgave but not forgot. Plain, forgot.

She looked away; she heard him put away his glass, and carefully slide off the curtained bed to the floor, to her level; any attempt at a touch, at comfort would be hypocrisy; and yet, hypocritically, she wanted it. She was not his conscience; she would never pretend to being his conscience; she thought that it would be sick if she were to be his conscience; but—

"_My_ mother's name was Alianna," she heard him succumb to her blackmail, in a dry, emotionless voice and a light accent on the possessive pronoun which told her, instantly, that she had not fooled him for a moment, before, with her hedging. "She was our Father's priestess— Don't go searching for her, little sister. More likely than not, you will find yourself disappointed."

"I didn't meant to." Themis, Irene's mother, had been Gorion's friend, Irene had told her; a dwarf with lovely cheeks and good counsel; she had lived in Mithral Hall and had died giving birth to her daughter; all in all, she had been an ordinary person who had simply met the wrong man— "What happened to her?" she demanded, cynically perusing the breach in the walls.

Sarevok was eyeing her cautiously, testing her limits. "Gorion killed her."

"Oh." That might explain certain matters, perhaps. "I'm sorry."

"As she was trying to kill me, sister." Or it might not; but she wanted to laugh: really, it said it all about their family's penchant for cheap melodrama.

Until, that is, the next bit arrived. "Or, at least, he says so."

She need not ask Sarevok who the 'he' whom he meant was; certainly not Gorion.

---

He said many things, many malicious things which were sometimes lies, and sometimes true, and it was sometimes hard to tell which were which.

_Step out of yourself, and speak to yourself. He will destroy himself. I need not._

Sarevok looked peaceful. Now. He always would, until one looked closer, and saw what a scattered mess he really was. Like a river in the thaw, full of trash, and bits of still not melted ice, and fresh, running water, all mixed together, sometimes flooding, sometimes stopping, sometimes reversing the flow, because of the trash; sometimes hurting people, because it could not yet decide which way it should go, and there was so much of it—

Or, perhaps, he had decided; that was why they were here.

Perhaps it was she who could not decide, now.

She didn't love Nalia d'Arnise, and Nalia knew that; they were only friends, friends who kept warm each other's bed; but, now, she must ask herself if Nalia was even that; if she was not, so unfairly, to the person, merely a symbol; of a home; of stability; of power; of luxury.

It was odd, at best, and slightly disappointing, and terrifying, to know that she preferred the Mithrest Inn, to the Copper Coronet; that, however many decent people lived there, she could not ignore the smell permeating the slums; that she had been ready to accept the offer Aerie had rejected; that, one day, she would start to treat servants as a fact of life, like Sarevok, just not to have to forever apologise to them for her fortunes, like Nalia; and she did have servants— It was a fact; it had already happened.

And she had felt relieved—immensely relieved—when she could heal, again. It, too, was a fact: she enjoyed the powers that set her away from the rest of humanity. They were superfluous, inessential, like luxury, or art; Sarevok could have just drunk a healing potion, like he did first thing almost every day, these days— They simply offered a new way of perceiving and influencing the world; this little, and that much. She would not kill with them; she knew how that made her feel; but the eternal question remained: between complete restraint and complete release; healing and killing; the two extremes—how far could she go? And, to put the question out of the realm of the potential, and into the realm of the painfully tangible— How far would she go in the company of the well-intentioned, ambitious Nalia?

And then, she must laugh, again: perhaps all that moral ambivalence, that quandary, was hollow, and utterly meaningless. She wanted a home, now that it was being offered to her, again; a base— Even Mazzy had a home to return to, ever so often. But she had once wanted a home in a guild of thieves; and then, had been made to understand that it was she who brought death and chaos to wherever her home she made; to bring chaos, she was ordained by the law of prophecy. And, today, she had seen the remains of Gaelan Bayle's guild.

Of course, her common sense told her, there must be space for chaos and free will even within a prophecy. Rielev's, they had fulfilled themselves, Sarevok and she; Mielikki's, Sarevok was now fitting to the fact; Kveroslava's had been openly conditional; Imoen's path was difficult to predict, the soothsayer had said.

She could not shake off her mind the image of the open space where the building should be.

She brought chaos with herself; she was not responsible for all evil in the world; was it fair to stake Nalia's life on the edge of uncertainty?

And then, there was her father's last blasphemy— Untrue, of course; but she would not have ridden for Nalia for fifteen hours straight to sit and wait idly for fifteen hours more. It was fair that Nalia know this; they were friends, only, and as much as that.

She felt cold.

---

The door opened behind her. Sarevok lifted his head, and she could just recognise that particular glimmer in her brother's eyes.

It quickly disappeared. Nevertheless, she turned around.

"Aran."


	43. VI: Check, 2

_Well... Today, a reference to one of the most famous chess games in the history of literature._

_Criticism, as always, welcome - but, above all, enjoy!_

**

* * *

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**Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**2**

Crayfish soup, stuffed pike-perch, roe-deer sirloin in chanterelle mousse; for the dessert, blackberry soufflé pancakes: a dinner is served.

Parchment-thin porcelain; old silver; enchanted crystal glasses; dim candlelight; heavy golden Tokay flowing freely, by a Sun-King called the king of all spirits. Laughter.

They parted from the small talk. "The geas." "The geas."

"Yes, the geas," said Imoen, wiping her mouth with a linen tissue. "There are two ways to take it off. The first is your word, Aran. The second is your death."

"Don't look like that at me, Aran," her brother shrugged, "I had nothing to do with it. You know I could not."

"You did not want my brother to be subject to any authority but, personally, yours. After all, he could not plot against you; not with deed, not with word, not with thought; not as much as ask, or—" she looked at the man sitting beside her, "being his self—induce—anyone to help him. And who would go to all this trouble, against you, for him?" She shook her head. "To be fair to Sarevok, he did everything he could to stop me—admittedly, not much, because you left him with really few options—"

The man on the opposite side of the table was listening; and so, she finished, "To be fair to you you left him with a failsafe in case some ambitious Shadow Thief murdered you and wanted to kill him, too. Which," she sighed, "leaves us in, what some might call, a three-way stalemate."

The Shadowmaster had, for once, a sincerely harried look. "If you try to kill me, Imoen—"

"Don't be simple, Aran," she interrupted him curtly. "I'm not talking about whose side my brother would take in a fight between us. Yours, of course. My trouble is…" She rolled her eyes. "He happens to like you. Beats me why, since you're really nothing but a swine of a human being, with your drug-dealing and double-dealing, and— Oh. I'm sorry. Did I insult you there? Well. You are."

He wanted to rape me, on that first night, when I was a guest in his house, she thought, watching the blond man in the elven chain mail; oddly, she felt more amused than genuinely angry. He was clearly attempting to think that it was a human girl threatening him, or a woman, but all he could see was a spiteful, unpredictable Daughter of Murder on a crusade to save her little brother from the clutches of the evil man who oppressed him: naive, yes. Simplistic, yes. Sanctimonious, yes. But, above all, extremely dangerous.

Sarevok was having his fun; but his good humour was about to disappear, too. She continued.

"See, Aran… My brother is actually scared for you. Because when you cast the geas, you tied him to you. And he— He has this little theory, you know? That this means that he will, in the end, kill you. Because, you know, we're supposed to bring death to the people around us. And a geas is a pretty strong bond, all in all, and, when you cast it, just as you tied him to yourself, you tied yourself to him. You tried to stop him by your side. And we—our destiny—it can't be stopped. He's actually even thinking that it's his fault that your people died, can you believe that? Now, me—"

She had come to a decision, in the end.

"What I think is that it's a load of bullshit. You have your own enemies and you're in danger on your own; and, who knows, maybe it's even true what they say about you? That it excites you to have a Bhaalspawn pet around? If so, you've gotten a bit too much for what you asked for, haven't you?"

Give; sympathise; control. She was in control, now.

"But, see, Aran… My trouble is, I don't think it's true, but he thinks so, so I can't kill you. And this, as I said, leaves us in a stalemate. My brother can't hurt you, and he won't hurt me. I could hurt you, but I don't want to hurt my brother. And you can hurt him, but," she gave the assassin a lazy all-over, "I really don't think you will be able to get to me. So," she smiled widely at the Shadowmaster, "my question is: what do you propose that we do about it?"

She didn't dare look Sarevok in the face. No man likes to have his fears revealed.

---

The Shadowmaster was the first to make a move. "You have grown mundane," he observed calmly in his pleasant voice, looking across the table towards Sarevok.

That one, lazily, held his gaze, matching cool blue with golden light. "A prison can change a man— I happen to enjoy it. The price of my head?"

"Bodhi, of course," Aran Linvail replied briefly; then, he turned to Imoen. "He will kill you, obviously, once he is freed."

"Yes," she agreed, "I thought you would say that, Aran. Leaving the Shadow Thieves can't be as easy as saying that you quit, can it? I think I'll take that chance."

One had to give it to the bastard: he knew when a fight was impossible to win. "Wonderful," he said, businesslike, measuring the siblings with more intrigue than rancour. "In that case, I see that we understand each other. By the way, Sarevok," he turned to his partner, "You might be curious. We found nothing in Irenicus' dungeon."

"Yes, I know," the Bhaalspawn replied easily. "Bodhi must have destroyed the evidence when she killed the dryads," he added, crossing looks with his sister.

The Shadowmaster, politely, did not ask the siblings their private business; instead, he acknowledged his final defeat. "There is someone you two should meet," he said, all matter-of-fact now.

---

The dwarf was grey-bearded and old; and he had on himself no helmet and no armour. To Imoen, who, in spite of a lifelong acquaintance of a wizard she-dwarf, had come to associate all the _other_ dwarves with small, burly, tightly contained bundles of metal, topped by a beard, topped by a helmet, running around with incredibly bad humours and axes as big as themselves— Well, it was terribly childish, to think so— But this dwarf, in spite of the complete set of clothes he had on, appeared naked. She almost took her eyes off him, for sake of common decency.

His clothes were black, and ragged; they had not treated him well. There were traces of dried blood on them, and in his long, matted, unkempt beard, among the ring-beads that still remained— He must have been proud of that beard, she thought. Dwarves generally were.

The face over the beard was terrifying. It was scarred, which meant little; twisted into a permanent, feral snarl, which meant so much more; and the bloodshot eyes narrowed under the thick, heavyset eyebrows were, presently, trashing about, wildly, now here, now there, quickly, blinking in the light.

He was tied; he was silent; save for the eyes, he was still; but he was on edge— She wondered if he was even aware where he was, who he was, or what was happening to him.

The gnome didn't seem to. He, in turn, was twitching and twittering, not for a moment still; and, though, to a human, that might seem ordinary gnomish behaviour, here, something, clearly, was wrong. His eyes were hazy and disoriented, and he was constantly singing and muttering to himself; he didn't appear to have noticed their presence. His clothes, in turn, were multi-colour: some sort of eye-stinging cyan for the trousers and magenta for a shirt and a short cape; his beard was also grey, but short and frizzled; he was bald. There were familiar streaks and spots of dried blood all over him, too.

They had brought them both in, bound and with blindfolded, Phaelos and Booter; and now, Aran Linvail was standing, smartly, behind them, towering over them with his regular features of a forty-something blond, blue-eyed, well-built, plainly handsome, intelligent and civil man.

"The dwarf," he was saying, briskly, "is Korgan Bloodaxe. I don't have to ask Sarevok if he has heard of him— Although I don't think you two have ever met, do you?"

"No," her brother, leaning against the back of a chair, examining the aforementioned individual with sheer intrigue on his face, admitted, "We haven't."

"Imoen?" In front of the Shadowmaster, the dwarf's suspicious leer flashed from Sarevok to Imoen, and back again.

"I have heard of him," she replied, diplomatically, failing to refer to the specifics. "A mercenary."

"Yes. His axe spilled seas of blood, as he enjoys boasting when drunk enough. Certainly, to give it to him, he did prove some trouble to catch alive. The gnome," the Shadowmaster said, passing to the second specimen, "is Jan Jansen." He smiled, privately. "A regular Shah'Razad— He thinks that, if he keeps talking long enough, we will let him live."

The gnome did not appear able to keep on talking for much longer; the Shadowmaster pursed his smile, and moved on. "However, he did say several interesting things."

"What?!" the gnome suddenly started to life; when he spoke aloud, he had an old, weak, slightly trembling voice. "Speak louder! I can't hear you!"

Aran ignored him. "Bodhi hired Bloodaxe and him—as well as several others, who, unfortunately, couldn't make it to this meeting—to send a message. To me, and to you; curiously, to both of you."

"Yes, yes, a standard tactic, _that," _the gnome below him said.

The Shadowmaster gave him a sharp look of sudden interest. "Jansen is, incidentally, the technological mastermind behind those detonations… The path from genius to insanity is never far, as they say. I am sure you would have something to share on this topic, Sarevok."

"Do cut the banter, Aran," that one, the quintessence of lack of amusement, replied. "Apparently, we have a vampire to kill. I would that we moved on to that."

"At once, Your Worship," the gnome agreed; next to him, Korgan Bloodaxe snarled, and, suddenly, gave out a long, low, inarticulate, animal-like grunt.

"Do they have to be here?" Imoen asked. The gnome's madness was simply sad—once one got past the fact that his current state was probably caused by several hours of torture at the hands of vindictive Shadow Thieves; but the psychopathic dwarf was certainly giving her the creeps. And she had threatened Aran Linvail not ten minutes before.

"You sound like Golodon," the dazed gnome pointed out, now, and the Shadowmaster backhanded his prisoner into silence. "Excuse that," Aran Linvail said. "Where were we?"

"Stop it," Imoen said coolly.

"The message," Sarevok reminded in the selfsame tone.

"Yes. The message," Aran Linvail repeated; then, he bent over the gnome and, meaningfully, asked, "What did Mistress Bodhi say to tell us, Jan?"

"You need my skills, I see?" that one rejoined, with just that barest hint of animosity which made Imoen start. Then, Jan turned to the siblings, and started to recite, blankly. "Mistress said that she will talk only to the Children of Murder. Only when the wings of night lift the enchantment will the Children, only, pass into the Mistress' home. And the guide," he added; and then, brightly, "I'll do it for a turnip."

"The guide?" Imoen asked, at the same time as Sarevok finished asking, "The enchantment?"

There was another deep grunt; and Korgan Bloodaxe spoke, in the habitual drunkard's deep, drawling brogue, "Aye, that be soundin' right. I'll do as ye tell, but only if there be a good amount of coin to it."

Then, the sot sniffed, gargled, spit, and, without waiting for the reply, went back to eyeing the room with wild lack of focus.

"Bodhi conditioned him well," Aran Linvail admitted with sincere respect; before returning to the subject matter. "We haven't managed to get much more out of him, but what we do have corroborates the gnome's words. Bodhi sent them to kill me, and, if they failed to, and remained alive, as your guides through the catacombs. Furthermore, apparently, her lair is under a heavy enchantment—"

"—to prevent unwanted entry," Imoen finished. "You know, brother," she turned to Sarevok, "I'm curious if we won't find Irenicus there, too. In that case. Would be convenient, wouldn't it?"

He was having thoughts of his own. "Can't Haz lift the spell?"

"Haz is dead," Aran Linvail replied curtly. "All my wizards are. The Cowled Wizards are having a field day with this, together with the Radiant Heart. Or they would be," he added, for the first time during the talk showing minimal apprehension, "if any half-decent Cowled Wizard remained behind to be hired."

There was, save for the gnome's background chatter, a brief silence; until Jan Jansen lifted his voice and said, slowly and with obvious effort, "You know, this reminds me of that time, way back…"

"You mean, Aran," Imoen interrupted him, "that you really want us to go in there alone? Just the two of us? At night? And with one of," she looked from the mad gnome to the insane dwarf, "them as guides?" She thought about this for a moment, and decided, "That will cost you extra."

---

They returned to the table for the second round of the negotiations; the two prisoners were led into a far corner of the room, seated—the dwarf in prudent distance from the gnome—and watched over by Booter and Phealos; their third man, whose name was Lime, was staying outside, together with the bodyguards who had accompanied the Shadowmaster.

They did not move much, the two captives; the gnome was still chattering to himself, lifting his voice from time to time to utter another inane remark; the dwarf was still studiously silent, and rolling around grim, suspicious looks. Imoen ordered Booter to give them some water; the gnome obediently drank it; the dwarf, like a rabid animal, first shunned it, and then, when forced to drink, spit it out. When they untied him, just to restore his circulation, they would have to contain him in something like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, she thought.

"—Cromwell has your armour ready," Aran Linvail was, meanwhile, telling her brother, and catching her attention when Sarevok animated and asked, with, as far as she was concerned, unwarranted enthusiasm, "Cromwell survived?"

"Yes, he did," the Shadowmaster replied, courteously, "I will have the armour brought in, before the evening."

Her brother frowned. "Wait."

A moment later, he returned, having fished out a sunstone from his possessions. "Tell Cromwell to frame it in somewhere," he said, passing it over to the Shadowmaster, who accepted it with a light frown and, for once, an obvious wish to ask a question.

Imoen smiled, and pulled out a memento of her own. "The string of the Gesen Bow," she said, dangling before all's eyes the thin, metallic cord which smelled of thunderstorms; the pupils of Aran's eyes widened; she was right. "You should have the shaft," she added, to underscore her point.

"And," her brother finished, almost apologetically, to his lover, "we will need the Cutthroat and the Lifestealer. Especially the Lifestealer."

The Shadowmaster looked at him in silence; and without a word, started to untie his personal weapons.

---

The Cutthroat was a short sword with a bloody history; it was plain and unadorned, but, on seeing it, Imoen's reaction was exactly the same as Aran Linvail's had been a moment before: she could feel herself, to put it crudely, drool. The blade was—enchanted The aura around it was so strong that— The Edge of Chaos was, perhaps, more powerful. Or the Carsomyr. But this was an assassin's sword.

The Lifestealer was worse.

It was a dagger, heavy, and warm to the touch; deathly black at its core, but the gem mounted in the hilt seemed to shine with an inner light of some sort— It made her uneasy when she held it, and she remembered, suddenly, the time when she only wanted to be a thief, but not an assassin; and the time when she wanted to be a wizard, and a thief, but not a Shadow Thief— The first impulse, therefore, was to throw it aside.

"It feels like this to everyone who touches it for the first time," Aran Linvail narrated lightly, observing her reaction. "They say that it has a demon imprisoned in it, and that it is one of a pair; the less powerful. It only steals life to feed its inhabitant, while the lost one took souls… The Lifestealer and the Soultaker. Having seen what this one can do, I am almost glad that the other one is lost… But it also protects its carrier. I can testify to that, myself."

"—Well, _cariad,"_ he laughed pithily, changing the object of his attention to the younger man present in the room, "you have disarmed me completely. You have taken from me my home, my people, my lover; and now, my weapons—"

Sarevok stirred; Imoen cursed; Aran shrugged. "Perhaps the young lady is correct, and I should be glad that I escape with my life? Out of sheer curiosity," he asked, on a different note, "which one will you be taking?" He nodded at the dwarf and the gnome, sitting in the corner.

Imoen frowned, not comprehending. "Which one—?" she repeated.

Sarevok was watching her expressionlessly, and, suddenly, she understood. This was another one of _his_ world's issues. Those she had hoped to avoid by conscripting them both into Mazzy's party.

The gnome should live and the dwarf should die, she thought, first, in sympathetic cruelty; die, like Rielev, and, in dying, be released, while the broken gnome would accompany them to the lair of the vampire who hurt him, she thought, next—

Then, he must die, because we do not have enough trust to spread across two people, as Sarevok once said, she thought, and I don't like his looks; and the gnome seems less dangerous.

"I think, brother, that we will call a priest to try and heal their minds," she said, in the end, reasonably, not taking her eyes off the Shadowmaster. "There is an Ilmatari shrine just outside the inn. They shouldn't ask too many—"

She heard a yell; Korgan Bloodaxe was charging: blindly; still bound; in berserk; straight at them.

When it was over, he had a sword through his breast and a dagger through his throat. She couldn't even decide which one of them had been quicker to the weapons from the table behind them.

"Oh. I can do _that_," Jan Jansen commented, conversationally.

---

She followed the Ilmatari into the gnome's mind: it was brilliant and wonderful, but shattered, like a mirror, or a crystal glass. She watched the man as he carefully picked up the mirror pieces, examined them, and put them together, welding them one to another with silk-thin strands of warm divine light; but she kept her distance. This was a task for a god more merciful than herself.

But when they left the gnome's mind, and the priest nodded, she put out her hand, touched the gnome's forehead, and said, as she had heard an avariel say, "I command you: sleep."

She did not use much authority; merely a caress, the lightest touch, a drop of moonlight and water; death and sleep are siblings, and she feared too much influence. It was enough. _Damyata._

The priest nodded, again, and, when she paid him, for his healing and, twice that, for his silence, he left; but she had to know, herself. Her divine senses had whispered to her that her father had not lied to her; and it had not hurt, her, to heal, again; but—

Her brother entered the room; he had said his farewells, she hoped. "It's late, brother," she said. "I'm going to sleep. You stay here with him."

Sleep would come easily; she had killed.

---

"Pangur!" she yelled, standing in the smouldering ruins of Mae'Var's guild. "Irene! Where are you?! Where are you?! Anyone?"

**What'cha wan'? Why yer yellin'?**

She could not start to say how relieved she was. "Pangur! And—Irene?"

The dwarf was walking sombrely through the shambles, twitching and twittering, muttering to herself, from time to time pausing and combing through the ashes; when Imoen called to her, she looked up at her sister through Korgan Bloodaxe's paranoid, squinting eyes. Then, the eyes widened in recognition; Irene started to run at her, and Imoen, out of sheer defence, called the Lifestealer into her hand—

But Irene only caught her other hand, and yelled, "Run!"

They started to run, all three of them.

"Why—are we—running?" Imoen yelled out, after a moment. Nothing was chasing them.

"Shh. So that—Father doesn't—find us!"

**Yeah. Lis'n t'the Red Queen.**

"The—Red Queen?" Imoen started. The wind was whistling in her ears, so fast they were running. "Listen— Irene— Father told me—"

"Yes—I know!—And he may—even think—he's so smart—and all—but he— He showed me— Faster!"

"Showed—you—what?" Imoen panted out, herself; but Irene only looked around, and, panting, decided, "Yes. This will do."

They stopped running; and were in the smouldering ruins of Mae'Var's guild. Nothing had changed. Even the wisps of smoke were still in their places.

"All right," Imoen, panting from the exertion, said. "Enough. What's—"

Irene still paid her no heed. "He showed me," she repeated, looking around, twitching, nodding, "He showed me how to call this thing—" She drew a deep breath; Imoen covered her ears; Irene knew how to bellow; she did. "CESPENAAAAR!"

"Mistress called?"

They both turned around, lightning-fast.

The creature was small, and misshapen; a homunculus with a big nose, a pair of small horns on top of his head, and a pair of small, bat-like wings growing out of his back. "He's your butler," Irene announced.

"My butler?"

"Yes," Irene replied. "Now. Quickly. Do you still have that necklace I gave you?"

"Necklace?"

**Oh, don' be daft. Jus' give it t' her.**

Imoen shook her head, and felt around her neck. It was all there: Irene's silver amulet she had carried out of Irenicus' dungeon and never took off since; and also, she found out, the strap of leather made of human skin, with the pendant: the Bhaal sigil, a skull surrounded by daggers.

She fumbled around the clasp, and took it off, the double necklace— "Good," Irene said, tearing it from her hand. "Now. One tear fell for every murdered soul, and our Father gathered them all. It has to be here, somewhere— Here! Now, you," she told Pangur, "Breathe."

Pangur rolled his eyes, and yawned demonstratively at the perfect crystalline tear which Irene had extracted from between the waves of the sea outside Candlekeep.

"Cat's breath; the ashes of tears shed after the first murder; the last's tear, itself; waning moon's last light; desert's unpoisoned water; a brother's promise; a sister's act; and a piece of you," Irene muttered, quickly gathering the components. She looked up at Imoen. "Blood will do."

"Ow!" Imoen protested, on principle.

"—And a demon."

"_That's_ a demon?"

"Cespenar, do your job," Irene ordered.

The little demon—did Sarevok get imp-sized demons, too? For some reason, Imoen thought darkly, it didn't seem likely—whipped out a small forge and a hammer, and started to beat intently at the necklace, in quite random places. He was muttering to himself as he worked: "Cespenar is a good servant, oh yes!"

Irene, meanwhile, returned to her twitching and twittering and looking around suspiciously. "Faster, faster," she hurried the demon, looking now over his shoulder, now hers, "Quicker, quicker!"

Imoen, by this time resigned to not having any of her questions answered in this dream, was surprised when Irene's look shifted momentarily to her. "Sarevok threw me out," she said. "I'll stay here, can't I?"

She was even more startled by the hint of pleading in the dwarf's voice. "Sure," she said. "If you want to. But what are you—"

"No time!" Irene said, in her hurried voice again; Cespenar had finished beating at the necklace. "Is it ready?"

"Yes," the imp screeched, "It's ready."

Irene quickly took the necklace off the forge, and pressed it into Imoen's fingers. "There," she said, breathing deeply with relief. "It's done. It's yours now. This place. Edwin showed me how to do it, when he was here— Father can't get in here, now. I don't think that's exactly what he was planning, but I knew that Darsidian was the only one that remained for him here, so when he killed him, I had to take the chance before you met someone else over there— It's all yours, now," she repeated.

Imoen looked at the necklace. The Bhaal sigil was distorted, hidden by the silver, the tears, the ashes, the moonlight, the water, the blood, the promise, the act and the breath—

"Mine?" she asked, eyeing the desolation around her. "What do you mean, Irene, _mine?"_

---

She awoke into a brave new world.

Then, she groaned.

Blood. She had not asked where Irene had taken her blood from. And they were going against vampires, tonight.

At least, she sighed, she knew she wasn't pregnant— Although the new moon would be only the night after tonight, and _that_ had definitely been the night of the full moon. Nalia's influence, perhaps.

Still, not the best way to start a day which would end in a vampire lair. Perhaps Bodhi could wait…

**Get'tup. T'mouse's awoken. An' he's insultin' my chick. Or not so. Ain't sure. Ya tell me. **

She had gotten herself a pocket plane, and now, life was starting again. From a cat's vendetta on a gnome, apparently.


	44. VI: Check, 3

OK. Some mild explanation… Check 2 and 3 were initially one chapter which grew into two. Except that the previous part got all the juicy bits, and this one got all the necessary bits.

In other words, that's why I'm posting it now… It's just a filler chapter, not really a chapter in its own right.

Just think of it as Return of the Jedi. The previous chapter is the return-to-Tatooine bit, and this one's the part where they are sitting in that village on Endor.

Also, the _Heike Monogatari_ quote is in Helen Craig McCullough's translation. And the Jansen tales are straight from the game.

**

* * *

**

**Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**3**

Jan Jansen was, indeed, up and about when Imoen entered the common room of the Mithrest's suite with Pangur in tow; up and about and talking animatedly with her brother, who saluted her with a fork when she came in.

She wondered if Sarevok had gone to sleep at all; with the way things were between Father and him, sleep must be as little relaxing as normal life, really.

"Have you slept well, sister?" he asked, and she could not shake the feeling that he suspected something; and he could be, about certain things, such a caricature of a man—

"Got myself a bit of a cramp," she replied, drawing on the ancient pool of easy lies; then, because it was just silly to lie when they were going to fight vampires, added, "It's nothing. I'll see a priest, later. But I don't want to talk about it."

He watched her, for a bit, and, in the end, said, "At least you know that you are not pregnant;" and she felt relieved that she had deceived him.

"—In any case, sister," he said, briskly, turning to the gnome; as if he, too, decided that it was not really his business to talk about her matters. "Jansen here was telling me stories—"

_**He was spinning you stories, master! He is a liar. Not a bard!**_

The heated protest was accompanied by a great ruffling of feathers and a thunderous spreading of wings on the stand where Altair was, sulkily, perched; the gnome himself, by the table, twitched and asked, weakly, looking around in sheer fright, "What? Is that that griffin about?"

"Yes," Imoen said, suddenly, wandering over to the carafe with water; was it really hot in the room, or was it just she?

She peeked through the window: clouds were gathering. It would be a dark and stormy night in the graveyard, she smiled, and returned to the conversation. "My cat is telling me that he thinks you are insulting Altair, Master Jansen. Is that what this is about? But she is an eagle, not a griffin, you know."

**Yeah. Ya tell 'im!**

The gnome blinked, several times, sniffed, as if sensing the new direction of the wind; and, in the end, said, "Well, by Aunt Petunia's beard! As Uncle Scratchy used to say, 'A true friend is a bald-faced liar.' I was recently reminded of my ex brother-in-law, Burt Wunderkind, fabulous griffin-baiter. Griffin-baiting's something of a cottage industry amongst Amnish gnomes. Quite simple, I've heard. You merely tame a couple of wyverns and WHOOSH, tear through the sky to fling insults at the hapless griffins— Taming wyverns is child's play, literally. As children, we'd tame wyverns. Everyone I knew had a pet wyvern. It's easy since they have such an affinity for turtles. Back in the old days it used to rain turtles on even days and frogs on odd days. That's what I thought until the drought hit. There were ornery wyverns everywhere. After a rich diet of turtle mash, you couldn't expect them to merely accept bacon without eating a few human nobles, now, could you?"

"Certainly not," Sarevok, courteously, answered across the table. "Horrible diet."

The gnome barely heard him. "Of course, by then, Burt was such a successful griffin baiter that the authorities just couldn't find it in their hearts to make us leash the wyverns. The loss of the noble class is truly a small price to pay to maintain the continuity of such a fine sport. There's nothing, I assure you, like the look of incredulity on a griffin's face to keep one's spirits up."

"Really?" Imoen asked carefully. The look of incredulity of Altair's beak was rather unforgettable, she must admit. So must be the look on her own. Face. Not beak.

"Yes, of course," the gnome replied, meanwhile. "Don't you worry, lass. If Burt ever pops by, I'm sure he and your eagle will just love to know each other. Perhaps we will even arrange for a small griffin-baiting contest, eh? You, me and him?" He looked to her brother, and passed smoothly to, "He can ride his dragon. Now that's a good one, although it still needs a few turnips, here and there. A story can never go wrong with a turnip, believe me, lass."

Imoen slowly processed the information. "You have been telling him stories, too," she accused her brother.

Sarevok shrugged; and, in a look of sheer innocence, proposed, "You should never reject free publicity, sister?"

---

They did, in the end, manage to assuage Altair's wrath; mostly by pointing out that, since the gnome culture extolled the virtue and the art of the invention and the illusion, their tales must, of necessity, reflect that outlook; and that Jan Jansen never pretended to the name of a bard; and that, which was Sarevok's final argument, and the first one that worked, he would not stay with them long.

Now, the siblings left him in the familiars' care—"I can't! I'm allergic! Well, all right, I'm not _that_ allergic," he protested when Pangur jumped into his lap and demanded to be scratch'd in recompense for his delicate nerves' previous upset—while they discussed just how best to tackle the latest guest into their lives.

The gnome was unpredictable. She wondered, lightly, if he was even aware how many people had died to his contraptions; about a hundred, Aran had told them, and that few only because the guilds were almost empty— Certainly, as he was now playing with Pangur on the floor, among the pieces of his gear Aran's people had brought with him, he didn't seem to care overly.

Then, again, after what the Shadow Thieves did to him, why should he? In the end, Jan Jansen had been the technological mastermind behind the three explosions which had levelled the three guilds with the ground; she had seen how he had left their hands.

She looked at him, again. He probably wasn't even aware how many enemies he now had in the city, too.

Not that he seemed to care about that, either.

This was the trouble with gnomes, really. It was hard to understand what made them tick. Of all the various peoples—elves, orcs, halflings—the gnomish mindset was the most alien to a human. Stunning, in its particular way; but alien. In cities, they lived in their tightly bound communities, rarely getting their large noses—the larger the nose, the more handsome the gnome, she remembered, suddenly—outside of them; what got out, instead, were the trinkets. Beautiful trinkets. Clever trinkets. Unpredictable trinkets. A gnome, some said, was never further than two steps from the edge of genius and insanity.

And they liked to pull pranks, sometimes just to see how people would react. There was a reason why, often, a child—a certain type of child, too—would get on with a gnome better than an adult human. They, with their illusions, and their pranks, and their large families, and their colourful clothes— She tried to think how her younger, vividly-pink-haired self would deal with that gnome over there. How old was he, actually? She couldn't even tell that. He seemed old; he was bald, and his beard looked old, and he called her, lass; but she could not shake off the feeling that he was younger than he was pretending to be; like a little, dangerous boy.

And that all still left the question of how insane he actually was; how far away they could trust him; what they could use to control him; and, if he survived the meeting with Bodhi, what were they supposed to do with Jan Jansen later. Aran would kill him. Plainly. And if he did not, a vindictive Shadow Thief would, a day after they carted him off to prison.

"What do you know about gnomes, brother?" she asked the man leaning against the wall next to her, with his hands in his pockets and a pensive look on his hard face.

"What everyone does, sister," he replied absently, "Also, certain basic facts about their gods. Useless in this case, I believe."

Imoen folded her arms and made a small mouth. "Yes, but, I mean… Have you known any closer?"

"Closer? One." Her brother's face took on a particularly cruel, mocking smirk. "He was a priest of Cyric. And he was insane."

"Don't yell! I can hear you just fine," Jan Jansen shouted across the room, and Imoen started. Right. Another thing everyone knew about gnomes: their ears were also big, and so, they had good hearing, too.

A scowl crossed Sarevok's face. "Fine, then. If this is what our genius wants. Sometimes, a frontal attack does prove more effective than a complex strategy," he said, and started across the room.

"Wait, brother," Imoen said, and, with a scowl of her own, followed.

---

"So you are a tale-spinner, gnome?" her brother asked, pulling a chair to prop himself against it. He was now towering over the little man, a golden-eyed man of seven feet of height to Jan's three-and-a-half, sitting on the floor; and he was no longer amiable. "Before we part, this—I—promise you, you will win such a story as you will never in your life forget— But now, riddle me this: why does a _gnome_ go against the laws of gods and men, and into homicidal madness? What kind of play is this?"

She must really teach him to put stress on that question differently, one of these days; and especially if, one of these days, she were to go and find out how Anomen was doing, Imoen thought; but aloud she said, only, "You don't have to put in any turnips, Master Jansen. We want only the truth, I'm afraid. And we can tell it when you lie, so you need not even bother."

"You can?" the gnome, wide-eyed, asked, looking from her to him, and from him to her, again; and then, in a small voice, he said, "Ooooh. Scary."

---

"It is not an easy tale for me to tell," Jan Jansen started, cradling her cat in his lap. "There was this girl, Lissa, an old friend of mine. More than a friend, I should say. She grew up poor, like me— I loved Lissa like I've never loved another. She was the most beautiful girl in Athkatla…"

**Naah. 's m'chick.**

_**Shh, Beloved. This is interesting. Though I thank you.**_

The little, big-eyed man in magenta and cyan clothes sighed. "I was not the only one to think so, however; she had several suitors when she came of marrying age. I worried little about it. I was her closest friend, and she claimed to love me…"

"Who was he?" Imoen asked sharply.

Jan looked up at her. "There are two types of gnomish families in Athkatla. Life is very different for us gnomes here, so used to the woods and the caves of the country. Many families struggle with poverty in exchange for the safety of the city walls and the Amnish law."

"Yes, I know," she replied. "I've been to the slums."

"Other families do very well. He came from one such. Vaelag—" The faces of his audience remained studiously neutral— "is—was—a Shadow Thief. A thief who pretended to be an honest merchant. He was not a pleasant person. He was a bully and a cruel man. He enjoyed exercising power. He was also suave, sophisticated, and very, very rich."

"We have the picture, I believe," said the man who had made Vaelag a guild-master of the Shadow Thieves. "She chose him."

Jan nodded glumly. "I had asked Lissa to marry me, and she had agreed. We were to be married at the midsummer's festival the following year. That was before she'd met Vaelag. He swept her off her feet. He showered her with gifts— At the time, my bitterness had me believe that he cast some sort of spell on her. Now, knowing what I do about magic, I know that she chose him of her own volition. She was pregnant shortly afterwards, and they were married."

He looked up, into the distance, and finished the tale, "I would have given her that world, had I been able— Then, it, somehow, stopped to matter. I just wanted Lis to be happy. Vaelag was a petty and cruel man but she loved him more than she loved me, I thought."

Imoen frowned. "What happened?"

"Vaelag was always a cruel father, and hard on Jaella. His daughter. I—"

---

"So, that is what Aran meant when he said he would like to retrieve him," Imoen said to her brother, in private.

"Yes," he nodded, lost in his thoughts. "Vaelag's widow and daughter, and his own immediate family, are almost certainly secured in a safe house already."

"Including Aunt Petunia, Uncle Scratchy, and however many of them there are," Imoen laughed; then, with sincere respect, she must admit, "He was not asking out of sheer curiosity."

"Aran never does," Sarevok smiled, privately; and so, she asked, half-teasingly, only, "Aran gets himself a geased genius weapons-master, the gnome is reunited with his childhood sweetheart, and everyone is happy and lives ever after. And that's how the tale ends. Is that all right with you, brother?"

"He is a genius only in his field, sister," he pointed out, flawlessly, with a glimmer of a return half-tease. "And, first, we have to make sure he survives to be reunited with said sweetheart—" He sighed. "First, an unripe Helmite, and now, an idiot savant gnome— When have I become a child nurse, do tell me, sister?"

She started; she remembered well in what circumstance he had last mentioned Anomen Delryn; that cold, 'No, sister; no more,' on the sun-saturated crown of Amaunator's temple— The mood was shattered. "Well, sister," Sarevok Anchev smirked, "You even failed to mention the hundred deaths that it will have taken to achieve your fruitful resolution. He is one of our own, after all; a murderer. Out of sheer curiosity: After his tale, do you still believe in coincidence?"

"You know that I do and I don't, brother," she replied. "But it has to start somewhere."

---

"Master Jansen, I would like you now to listen carefully to me," she said, handing to the gnome her old, pink sword and her invisibility ring. "You have to take us to that vampire, I'm afraid. But I promise to you that you will be safe with us." She gave him a small smile to cheer him up. "Just like my brother promised to you that there may be even a good tale to be spun out of this. Now. If anything happens, this sword—"

The gnome took down from his forehead onto his large nose a set of complicated lenses and glasses, and, muttering, "Now, now, don't tell me, lass—" started to examine the length of the blade.

"Oh, I know this one. It's an Arbane's sword!" he grinned when he was finished. "Stylish, too. Reminds me, in fact…"

"I'm glad that you like it," Imoen said, hurriedly. "Now. Once the fighting starts, I want you to hide. Don't fight, I know that you can fight, but don't fight, we'll manage this on our own, Sarevok and I. You're to hide. The sword will make you unstoppable by magic, and the ring is an invisibility ring. All right?"

"It shall be done with skill and care… if not brevity," the gnome pronounced seriously, and with a grave nod.

She narrowed her eyes, and joined in the play. "Oh, the sword will deal with that, too, Master Jansen… It can haste you, you know? Now, do you have anything to do on your own? Only my brother and I have to think about the fighting…"

---

The gnome, it so turned out, had a lot to do, and wasn't even much moved by the lack of attention of the two random strangers who had wandered into his life; he had his trinkets to deal with, and, apparently, those had been much damaged in between the vampires and the Shadow Thieves.

Apart from the glasses—the spectroscopes, as Jan Jansen called them—he had: a pair of gloves with a lot of knick-knacks built into them—there were thieving tools among them, which made Imoen start, for a moment; a strange armour, made of a foreign material, very supple, but strong to the touch, which, in turn, caught her brother's notice; and a crossbow. The Flasher Master Bruiser. With its assorted Mates.

On seeing them, Imoen finally convinced herself that the gnome would not be unhappy as Aran Linvail's weapons-master; whether Aran Linvail's thieves would be happy with their new equipment was a matter of its own.

The trinkets were damaged, therefore; or, perhaps, merely in need of improvement; Imoen had a feeling that they always were in need of improvement; like her magic, these days; who was she to judge?

They, hence, left the gnome alone, in the side room, with his baubles, and spent the day on improving their magics; on scribing into their spell-books the spells which Imoen had bought the day before— And on assembling tactics for dealing with their enemies.

Halfway through the day, they all ate a brief lunch—

**I've a story.**

Ger'off, Pangur, Imoen thought, tiredly; she had been right about the weather. It had grown heavier, hotter and stuffier throughout the day, and the joke about the dark and stormy night in the cemetery did not even seem to be that much of a joke, anymore. When she had left the inn for a brief walk around the Promenade, it had not been nearly as restful as the previous day's.

And Sarevok could not leave the Mithrest, or have company, and she felt mildly guilty to leave him, alone.

The gnome was now sleeping off the heat, and they, only waiting for their weapons and the coming of the night; she, too, wanted to sleep; and now, her cat had jumped onto her breast, and was nudging her with his muzzle, and wanted—

"No, let him," her equally bored brother said, putting away his book and acknowledging for the first time Pangur's thoughts. "What tale would that be, cat? I'm curious."

'**s yes'rday**, her cat muttered, jumping off his mistress, onto the floor, the pulled-away chair and the table; Altair started on the cupboard where she had been dozing off in the heat; Imoen exchanged a quick look with her brother; then, suddenly, frowned. "From yesterday?" They had been all day together, yesterday; unless— "Oh, no. No, you don't."

"Yes, you do," her brother said, taking clear pleasure in her torment, "Do tell, cat," he exhorted.

**It happn'd in the rat-house, **Pangur purred, and Imoen groaned.

**T'chick, t'gal and me ent'r the pub. There's this dwarf, see? Inside, like. And he's got a kid of a mouse by his'self. Not like this in 'ere. Like t'ones tha' hunt'd us yes'rday— Like t'ruddy noisy one, back in tha' hole—**

He looked around his audience with sudden despair on his snout, out of the blue made aware of the perils of storytelling proper; Imoen bowed in, sighed, and said, "He means a halfling, brother. A halfling child."

"And the 'ruddy noisy' one would be, in that case…" her brother started, with suspicious delight; Imoen gave him a look.

**So's. There's this dwarf. The mouse kid's goin' aft'r him. Except no'one's seein' anythin', like, see? The dwarf, neither. So, she, **Pangur looked at Imoen, who gave—him—a look, in turn; why was he telling this thing, anyway, if three of the four people present in the room had taken part in it?— **She goes t'the dwarf, an' says, all polite, 'Scuse me. There's a kid followin' ya. Won'tcha get 'im home? Ain'tcha shamed t'bring a kid in here?' Or some such. 'cept—**

By now, her cat was fairly animated. And he should, she admitted miserably.

**T'dwarf takes one look at her, an' runs. No fault 'ere, I say. The mousy kid stays. So, she goes to the kid, an' puts a han' on 'im. T'talk to him, s'ppose. 'cept it goes all thru. So, she takes a bett'r look, an' says, scaredy-like—**

Pangur stood up high, with his tail lifted and erect, like a flag, and the pupils of his eyes widely dilated. No one could dilate pupils of their eyes like cats, if they wanted to.

_**I see dead people. **_

**An' all body's lookin' at her, see? Like she's daft.**

Well, it was a bit of a shock to learn that she was talking to a ghost no one else saw, Imoen thought. Ghosts should stay in long-forgotten ruins, not haunt busy city taverns— And, in any case, Wellyn got his toy back from his murderer, and was now, hopefully, resting in peace.

**Now's yer turn, hun'. Don' be scar'd. Ain't that hard.**

He was now looking at Altair, her cat was; and the eagle was stepping around on the cupboard, now here, now there, clearly mortified by the attention. _**Master?**_

**She's a bit shy, y'know? F'rst public perf'rmance.**

"Why not?" Sarevok said, aloud. "Why not?" Imoen echoed.

Altair flew down from the cupboard to the chair which he had pulled off, before; and from there, hopped onto the table. For a moment, she stood there, thinking, with her head bowed; Imoen slid closer and pulled the chair away completely to get a better look.

_**The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the colour of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.**_

"Not that one!"

Altair froze with outspread wings resting on the table, looking at her master.

"You must be kidding me, brother," Imoen, pointedly, retorted. "Why not? The beginning sounds nice enough. I like it already, in fact, Altair."

"It is eight hundred pages long, sister."

"So what? She'll tell an abridged version."

---

It was an odd feeling, to listen to a bird singing with arched back and outspread golden wings a tale of war, decay and fall, before a fight; but it brought comfort.

She drifted, from the heat and the wait for the night to come, so that they may finally all move on with their lives; or die trying—Irenicus may be there, after all, with the vampire!—off to the distant Eastern lands, where the two noble clans were fighting.

The general of the first clan was arrogant, evil, ruthless, and so consumed by the fires of hatred that even in death his body refused to cool when people immersed it in water; he fought with his erstwhile ally and friend, and killed him, and his two eldest sons; the three youngest, he showed mercy and exiled; when their time came, they avenged their father— And so the tale went on.

It was a gem of a tale, beautifully cut and framed; it brought comfort to see familiar figures, good triumphant and evil vanquished, even in so far away a land; and, in the end, because through her own negligence, she had found herself on her brother's side— When they thanked the bard, and the bard, and her cat, indecently rubbing himself against Altair's breast, purring, left them, together, to themselves— Then, because he had raged, and said, and felt, and tried, and failed, and done; and because more, much more of this was yet to come; and because, in the end, sincerely, she did not know what else she could do— She offered to him a story; one of the few last which remained between them.

"So quoth Matsudaira-no Tamoko, on the spear side, samurai, child to shoguns; on the distaff side, kunoichi of the Hattori clan of shogun's ninja: Three are the things which unite people: Love of life. Fear of death. Family bonds. Admire the strength of the family who love death; pity the fool who enters between them. I have betrayed my master, and, masterless, become a rōnin. I plead for death, instead."

She tried to envisage the place and the face; there were in her mind places without names, and names without faces, and she had already seen many a wonderful sight before that and afterwards— She had seen druids' fiery swords fighting in a swamp; a dragon flying on the south-west wind; a temple, dead for centuries, with its guardians; and the light of afternoon through an eagle's golden, widespread wings— She must try to put through that complete darkness of the cavern which yet impressed her; the dead voice, and the empty black eyes in the waxen, unmoving face; the prim stance, the dark armour, the hands straight alongside the hips; the hilt of the katana; the tortoiseshell sword-clasp in the high chignon—

"Khalid heard her. 'It is folly,' quoth he, 'to put up life for another's folly.'

'I fight not for the folly of another,' saith she. 'I fight for my honour, my love and my life.'

And he saw that she was already dead, and replied, 'Then I shall fight you.'

They drew."

The next part would be difficult. The truth was that Khalid was a good fighter; but…

"Vixen-like, she attacked; he caught her brand on his shield, and attacked himself; she caught his blade with hers, and stepped aside from his path. Then—"

…she _danced_ around him, always with that mad, suicidal blankness on her face; she was no friend of theirs, and she was mocking their friend, but at any moment then, she could have walked away freely from that fight, unstopped by any of them; and not the least because they knew that Khalid would not have stopped her himself.

At one point, that stupid clasp let go, and let go of all her hair, a whole pillow of long, black, female hair, and she didn't even seem to notice that— She didn't notice Khalid's blow, either.

"The samurai lay slain, to a deep cut across her neck and breast, bleeding; when the man's wife roused and said, 'She lives still.'

'What shall we do with her?' asked the man.

'I will heal her,' said she. 'She lost her blood; she may die; she may live. She pled for death; she fought for her life. Let her choose its balance herself when she awakes.'

Thus done, the heroes continued."

---

"You didn't kill her, brother," she said, as the blackness of the deep cavern of the Undercity gave way to the light, easy comfort of the Mithrest Inn. "You killed many other people, I'm afraid, but you didn't kill her. She pled for her death, but she fought for her life, and I can't tell you which way she chose it. I wish I could offer you certainty, but…" She shrugged. "You never know."

"So," she smiled at the man who had moved sometime during her tale, and was now sitting next to her on the bed, looking at the floor. "There's no need— Don't go looking for her, little brother," she must say, then, as she saw him.

"I wasn't planning to," he replied, absently, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. Then, he looked at her, suddenly. "What was her death poem?"

She blinked. "I'm… not sure, brother," she said, carefully, caught unawares in the muddle of cultural differences. "I don't really remember that well—"

"Of course not," he said, sharply, dissatisfied. "Excuse me, sister. It was entirely uncalled for. I thank you for telling me what you do remember." Then, in an obvious effort to make up for the unpleasant impression, he smiled, and reached to her hair. "Will you paint it again?"

She made, purposefully, a small face. "Tomorrow, brother. In celebration of Bodhi's demise. Unless something monumental and terrible happens on the way. For example, it turns out that we can't deal with Irenicus, even now, and have to hightail it out of there, if we still can, that is— Aran will be fine, too, I'm sure, by the way, brother."

"But you," she finished, equally on purpose, "you still owe me a tale, little brother. The last one. And you're not getting out of this one, I'm afraid. Not now, and not today."

---

He told her a tale. It was simple, and not that different from many others she had heard across the Sword Coast; and it ended badly.

Then, he asked her for another story.

It was superfluous, against the rules, and she told him; it was simple, and not that different from the others heard in the taverns of Amn; and she started it with, "Rested atop the cliffs that rise from the Sword Coast, the citadel of Candlekeep—"

Then, being who they were, they compared the notes.

It was, in due process, decided that both tales must, one day, be retold, for the ears of public; and that, since they must, the siblings must themselves part. There was some small issue on how to explain this to the familiars— They must accept it. It would not be forever. Separation was a part of life.

They were getting too close. Yes. For her, new faces, new people, new experiences; if a month in his company— Yes. Then a month away from it— Yes. Yes. For him, he could not always rely on her, could he? There had been matters he could not have dealt with, on his own, but now, sister, was the time— Yes, brother. You do know that, if you ever need me— Yes. Yes.

She would visit him in prison. He would do his best, _fas et nefas, _to win his trial. Perhaps, if Nalia vouched for him, they would let him stay on her lands— No. She would be fresh yet as a duchess herself; untested. They would not, it was tacitly agreed. The siblings, therefore, should not ask her.

Speaking of Nalia, there were certain matters of her own which Imoen had to tell to her; she would that Nalia let her have a place with her, but that she went on adventuring with the Fentan Knights. The former would be for Nalia to decide; the latter— There were certain matters she would rather discuss first with Mazzy Fentan before she discussed them with anyone else. Speaking of which— Matters of prophecy were touched upon; diaries were read, their contents expounded, and an assortment of future courses of action argued.

It would take some artful arrangement of the timetable, her visits to him and her life her own, before they rejoined. They would manage. Most people, somehow, did; although how, remained a matter yet to be determined.

—If they managed Bodhi. And Irenicus, possibly. And there was Jan Jansen, too. He should live. She had promised to him that he would live.

Yes.

---

The weapons arrived, at last, towards the evening.

His was a beautifully crafted golden chain mail, a far cry from that old elven chain which they had carried out of Irenicus' place; though this was it, if restored by skilled dwarven hands.

The helm was made of polished steel and set with diamonds, rubies and fire opals; and a sunstone. It was winged rather than horned, and, in Imoen's private opinion, terribly tacky. Then again, her brother had never laid claim to possessing actual good taste.

Hers was the Gesen Bow.

She drew the string, and fell in love with it.

She let go of the string without firing off the spear of lightning; then, put it on her back, and girt herself with the pair of her new weapons, the Lifestealer and the Cutthroat; Aran Linvail had sent an armour for her, too, the grey armour of a Shadow Thief; but she had scorned it. She would go in her clothes, as mage.

Perhaps, with time, she thought, she would get herself an elven chain of her own?

In the corner of her eye, she could see Sarevok finish his own preparations; and Jan Jansen, in his colourful clothes, his armour, his spectroscopes, his gloves; with his sword and his crossbow on his back—

They wrapped themselves in the dark cloaks of the Shadow Thieves; and went out of the Mithrest, and into the strong wind.

It would be, unfortunately, a dark and stormy night.


	45. VI: Check, 4

_Well, so my excuse is that I haven't written cheesy action / adventure in a loooong time... Here's hoping you enjoy!_

Also, I've randomly decided that adamantine is Kevlar.

* * *

**Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**4**

By the time the siblings reached the graveyard, it was raining.

The cast-iron gate opened slowly, and with an ominous screech Imoen did not quite remember from her visit here at day-time; rays of lightning criss-crossed the dark sky, briefly illuminating the silhouettes of trees, decaying crypts and graves, and then blinking them out of existence, again, to a roar of thunder; the strong wind lifted fallen leaves and stabbed her face with cold water droplets; and, as she surveyed the place for her enemies, she was glad that she had the Lifestealer on her.

There was a reason why a dark and stormy night on a graveyard was such a trope. On some level, deep inside, it still worked.

Jan led them down a crumbling stone path, slippery from the rain; first, across a small, tombstone-filled lawn under a giant oak; then, through a small, five-tree grove of cypresses mourning a pair of star-cross'd lovers; finally, after a few turns, into an alley of tombs interspersed with yews, and to a cluster of crypts. "And so, this is it," he wiggled his eyebrows under his hood as he stopped in front of a nondescript grate. "The hideout! Very important, yes. I suppose one might say that. Reminds me— All right, all right. From now on, the floor's all yours, kids," he finished, hastily, to the two identical glares he received.

Fighting against the rain, Imoen looked around; in the corner of her eye, she could see Sarevok do the same. The entrance was not trapped, and open; they tied a piece of brown cloth to it, in case they ever need to find it again, and moved in.

---

The inside of the crypt was pitch-black and narrow; but, at least, dry; all that remained of the thunderstorm was the steady patter of droplets on the zinc-foil roof above them.

The darkness was promptly dealt with by the summoned lights; the siblings quickly released the complaining familiars from the enchanted bags, and took off, rolled and hid the water-drenched cloaks inside in their stead.

Sarevok took also Jan's cape, leaving the gnome in his cyan trousers, his magenta blouse, his soft purple leather armour, his black, lacquered shoes, his patched, grey, black, blue and metal knick-knack gloves; and also, his spectroscopes strapped to his forehead, above his large, bright, lively eyes; and also, further, the pink sword tied to his belt, as long as, for Jan Jakobar Jansen, a long-sword; and, finally, the Flasher Master Bruiser the gnome was dauntlessly carrying on his back.

Imoen shuddered, again, when she saw the crossbow. However, the gnome had started to talk when they had tried to talk him out of it; moreover, he had promised not to talk and not to use it when they had let him have it. In the end, they had agreed tacitly that they had gotten off lightly; and that this was easier than gagging the gnome.

Sarevok, amused, emerged from his cloak as his scarred self, resplendent in the darkness; the light of the conjured lights and the light of his eyes reflected and refracted from the chains of his mail, fused by dwarven art into small, shining scales, like the scales of a lizard, or a snake, or a golden dragon; and that his helm was winged, and its precious stones arranged in streaks—the sunstone in the centre, then the ogee arch of small rubies over it, the clear diamonds striking in two founts away from it, and, finally, on the wings' upper edges, the fire opals—only added to the serpentine feel. He had already unsheathed his sword; the armour's scales, finer at the edges, vanished inside his boots and his dark gauntlets as though they were casual cloth.

The gauntlets were kidskin; Imoen, herself now wearing her celadon and grey clothes, tunic and pants; her high, cosy thief's boots; her enchanted bracers on her forearms, for protection—had bought a pair for herself, too, fingerless shooting gloves; the fine leather would not hamper the spell-casting, and, frankly, she had had enough of the constant blisters.

She checked her weapons for one last time; her sword and her dagger around the waist, with the potions and the pouches; her silver bow, without a quiver, on her back; on her neck, as always, her amulet. It was giving her some mild trouble, now; she had grown accustomed to the way it enhanced her magic abilities, and the advantage, however small, she had over her brother, was always a nice thing; and these days, it sometimes seemed they could almost tease each other over it— However, now, that advantage had grown; when they had studied together, earlier, she could feel an empty space, hungry to be filled, where there had been none. She had not told Sarevok about it—

Her brother bowed, lightly, as he invited her into the dance, again. "Shall we, sister?"

**Lessgo.**

_**I'm… game. That is… ready, master.**_

"Let's go, brother," Imoen nodded, as ladylike as she could muster, "Lead on, Master Jansen."

---

"RRAAGH!"

Sarevok thrust the Edge of Chaos in between the ribs; lifted the blade, together with its offensive occupant; pounded said occupant against the floor; against the wall; finally, booted him in the pelvis, pushed him off the sword, stepped onto him, and kicked his head off. Then, he glared.

The skeleton warrior, reduced to a set of bones, did not dare twitch.

Imoen stopped inspecting her fingernails. "Are you done having fun, brother?"

Her brother smiled at her, coolly. "The next one is all yours, sister," he said, agreeably, stepping off the crushed ribcage.

---

Madness lies the way of calling the inside of a crypt, familiar; it was.

Narrow, high granite passages in which Sarevok could at ease walk upright and Altair could not fly at all; tombs and caskets, some closed, some open, littering the floor, forcing the siblings to squeeze between them; columbaria; shelves of grinning skulls and shelves of bones, arranged by shape, size and sort; the occasional stand-alone ornate sarcophagus; an octagonal chamber of a crossroads, with carvings, sculptures and blind doors—The summoned lights revealed them all, one after another, as the siblings passed them by, and gave life to the shadows beyond the lit spot; the air in the necropolis was stiff, dry and cold; the occasional mummy or skeleton, called forth from restless sleep by the vampires' presence, lurked out from behind the corner; and, after the graveyard's topside, Imoen's mood, unquestionably, improved.

Been here, done that— Bodhi had imprinted the path through the catacombs into Jan Jansen's memory; the siblings made their maps, and tied their own markers to doors and posts. And the coolness was not unnatural, as it had been in Amaunator's temple. It was merely the coolness of the grave.

"Why are there so few undead here, gnome?" her brother asked meanwhile, in tune with her thoughts.

Their guide, unquestionably delighted by the question—questions were fair game, they had all agreed—said, "Oh, it was them paladins, you see? The Mistress played tag with them all over this place. Just like my nephews Tat and Tot, back at home—"

"You saw it, Master Jansen?"

"Oh, yes, indeed—" Imoen narrowed her eyes. "No, lass. Afore my time, I'm afraid. Speaking of Tat and Tot…"

"What's Bodhi like?"

The gnome shuddered. "The Mistress? Oh, she's your regular vamp, nothing new here, lass. Teeth, blood, and an unhealthy obsession with black leather. A bit on the dead side, too. But, believe me, lass, you don't want to talk about Mistress Bodhi. The memories she left me? Ghastly horrible. Enough to give a gnome indigestion after a good dinner of turnips. Let me, instead, tell you about my cousin, Tyllie Fleetknees, and the garden she had at the foot of a dryad tree in the Forest of Wyrms. I tell you, Tyllie went up there expecting well-aerated soil—and did she get a surprise? Oh yes, indeed! Why, I remember _that_ like it was burned into my memory with a flaming stick… which was very close to the truth actually…"

A high screech from the van interrupted him.

Imoen started, grinned, and jumped onto a casket to get round the gnome. "Excuse me for a moment, Master Jansen. It seems my brother forgot a promise."

As she drew her sword, she wondered, briefly, how Aran Linvail was doing. There was the small matter of a bet against destiny, after all; and, that silliness aside, of keeping his side of their agreement.

---

Rain poured down heavily all over Athkatla that night; and, throughout the city, the shadows stirred and let go of their namesakes.

There were two guards afoot, standing in front of Captain Haegan's headquarters, cursing the weather; a thunder rolled; two guards stood afoot, and two bodies with slit throats were being pulled through the mud behind a fortuitous corner.

The three windows of the house were each trapped and barred with wooden planks; the roof was slanted, devoid of trap-doors, and, in the rain, wet; there was no magic to be had, save that bought from legal vendors, dearly, or stolen; and there were, instead, inside, hostages.

The door opened, and the two guards, still cursing under their hoods, entered the house.

By the table, Jimmy Haegan threw his cards. "What—"

His question was cut short by a crossbow bolt.

---

Isaea Roenall was sitting in his office, with his ledgers in his lap.

He did not hear the soft steps behind his armchair; he did not feel anything until the garrotte tightened on his neck.

Then, he did not feel anything at all.

Pelanna stepped back from the corpse and smiled at the girl-servant. "Go," she said. "Forget. I have no quarrel with you. Tonight."

The maid, wide-eyed, nodded slowly, and left.

Pelanna studied the corpse meticulously. Isaea Roenall had been rich and, hard as it was to believe that, had had a loving family.

Fortunately, there existed means to prevent resurrection. Oil of vitriol, for one.

---

In the Copper Coronet, it was life as normal; the storm had as much brought new as chased off its usual clientele. Garoll, the half-dwarf, was sitting by the bar when the blond man in the elven chain entered, followed by a few others, in grey armour.

He sputtered, coughed, blinked and did a double take.

"Wosswron' wi 'ye?" his drinking companion asked. "Y'look like ye've seen a ghos'."

"A ghost?" Garoll replied, in no state to drunkenly drawl. "I wish. That's my boss."

---

Behind the counter, the owner of the Copper Coronet turned slowly his attention from his property to his newcomer. "The Shadowmaster himself. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Consider it a hostile takeover," Aran Linvail replied briefly; he was in no mood for pleasantries. "Do your job," he ordered his provisional second-in-command—what was her name, again? Sime, from Vaelag's guild— She stopped gawking, and moved to her task. Finally—

The tall, greasy-haired man behind the counter stirred. "Hurrrm. Lisse will—"

"Thank you, Bernard," the Shadowmaster, suddenly much more cheerful, replied.

The Harper agent held his gaze as he slid his sword out of his former employer's back. "Your orders, sir?"

---

"Get them out of here," Aran said, gesturing to the drunken crowd which had thought better to notice the sudden change in management, and not few employees, "Those from the back, too. We are closing for the night."

The Copper Coronet was too infamous an address to be viable for a permanent guild-house; for now, it must do. Even the Sea Bounty was too uptown to evade notice for long; another matter to take under long-term consideration—

Bernard was still waiting. "Ah, yes," Aran recalled. "The slaves. There is an Ilmatari shrine on top of this establishment, is there not? Bring the priest to heal any wounded, draft all who would join us as minders or cutpurses, and take the rest to the Radiant Heart. Courtesy of Sarevok Anchev and Imoen of Candlekeep."

Fires started up around the city; the Shadow Thieves were itching for the blood of the vampires' underlings, and the pair had given it to them; as they worked to eliminate his last enemy.

---

The whoosh of the fireball ended the fight. "Too easy," Imoen rolled her eyes as, in the side corridor, the group of mummies turned into a group of undead torches.

Her brother quirked an eyebrow. "Where now to, gnome?"

"This way, lad," Jan Jansen, strangely silent, replied, "It won't be far, now."

It wasn't; they entered another in the series of interminable side passages and chambers; it was empty, made of sandstone, painted with mosaics, and it had a roughly Sarevok-sized hole in the opposite wall.

Imoen walked up to it, looked through it, and caught herself on the edge. "Whoops," she said, gingerly stepping back from the opening.

"Sister?" Sarevok looked over her shoulder. "Indeed."

Then, clearly personally offended, he demanded, "How come? Athkatla is built on silts."

---

After the claustrophobic tightness of catacombs, finding oneself looking over the edge of an underground precipice must be breathtaking; and, at some quirky times, the incentive for a quarrel.

"We have been walking for twenty minutes—"

"Forty, brother."

"Twenty without the fighting, sister. We have passed seven intersections and eighteen side openings. We have been moving to the south-west, at a steady declination of some ten degrees. In a word, I—am—fairly sure, gnome, that this is not the Underdark."

"Explain the cobweb, then," Jan Jansen replied triumphantly. "Hah! I knew it. You can't! Your kneecaps are now mine!"

The web was stretched, like a net, over the bottomless abyss, about Imoen's height below the opening; and as far as they could see in the summoned lights; it shimmered lightly in the glow, and its eyes were fine enough that they may not even fall off it if they walked over it.

"Master Jansen, you are our guide," Imoen reminded sharply. "There was no word of any caves."

"Oh, all right, all right," the gnome sighed. "Since you ask so nicely, lass… Several years back— Well, several centuries back, actually—"

Sarevok smiled. "Cut to the present, gnome, or I cut your tongue."

Jan Jansen worked up an obvious huff. "I can't! See, lad, everybody knows that _nowadays_, the Cowlies exist just to drive high the prices and throttle the hungry masses of potential customers in demand of cheap, clean, easy magic. But wa-a-ay back, there was this bunch of wizards who more or less turned to be the _reason_ the Cowlies are now sitting all over your average gnome turnip peddler's head, see? Well, _maybe_ with the occasional little less-than-legal enterprise on the side—" Sarevok cocked his head. "Ahem. Truly evil wizards, they were. Golodon the Unmanned would look like a saint next to them. Have I ever—" Sarevok narrowed his eyes. "Oh. Right. Yes. They blew this bit up, so the Cowlies wouldn't get them. The Mistress found it, when she was in that bit of a hurry I might've touched upon earlier, and got her drow to get the spiders to weave the web over the gap to the inner sanctuary. On the other side." He tried to motion with his head.

"The inner sanctuary," Sarevok repeated calmly.

"Well, yes, yes— Let go?"

"Fine," Sarevok set down the gnome dangling from his fist.

Jan Jansen demonstratively brushed invisible dust off his armour.

Then, he perked up, and looked brightly at the golden-eyed face. "You know what? I think we'll make a fine partnership! Like Drizzt and Wulfgar, Elminster and Volo… Heh. We should go into the vegetable peddling business together!"

He earned himself an acrid smile. "Perhaps, gnome," the Son of Murder replied. "One day. Sister?"

---

The sister in question was standing on the edge of a ravine, with her bow in her hands, her cat at her feet, and her brother's eagle perched near her head.

_**Slightly up. To the right. Down. Stop. Perfect.**_

She drew the string until she felt the spear of lightning materialise under her fingertips; and then, released it into the darkness below, followed by the smell of rain and thunderstorms.

A faint blue discharge criss-crossed a rough sphere in the distant blackness, and, together with it, died.

"Did you get it?"

She started; her brother was leaning against the wall by her, watching her through amused, narrowed eyes. "Yes," she replied slowly, reluctantly, "I think so, brother. Altair?"

_**Yes. They are gathering.**_

"How many?"

_**Seven… No, eight, **_the farseeing bird replied.

"In that case, mightn't I join you, sister?"

---

"Spiders, Master Jansen," Imoen started, "are cannibalistic. That is why it is extremely rare in nature to see several spiders sharing a single web. Brother?"

"Few humans know that spider-silk is five times as strong as steel on equal weight basis," he picked up the familiar lecture. "Adamantine was initially developed as artificial spider-silk replacement; however, the original still has one major advantage over the imitation: the latter dissolves to dust on sunlight. Sister?"

"A typical spider-web is composed of two types of thread. The first one is sticky. That is what catches the prey. The spider itself moves over the second, non-adhesive type of silk. That's also how the spider senses a prey caught in the web," crouched over the giant cobweb, she smiled, "By sensing the vibrations carried across the tautly strained threads."

She dropped the chunk of sandstone.

---

The susurrus of the long, hairy legs scurrying hastily across the gossamer threads reached them long before the sight of the cavalry: spiders, large as cows, running to meet them.

Imoen, casting her sight through Pangur's senses, first saw emerge from the darkness the four pair of giant eyes— They were excellent targets; as she shot, quickly, arrow after arrow, Sarevok fired off a volley of magic missiles—

An explosion resounded through the cave, startling them both. The spiders were still.

"The gnome, sister," Sarevok hissed.

He was lying flat on the floor between their legs, aiming his crossbow with obvious care. "Take that, turnip-hating scum!" he announced, at last, and fired off another charge; that went out to meet the closest spider; struck it in the chops; exploded, to a deafening echo. Meanwhile, Jan Jansen was already sitting and loading his crossbow with another powder-filled skull-like Mate.

"Leave that for the vampires," Sarevok snarled, tearing him off the floor by the collar of his armour. "Come, if you must!"

They slid down from the precarious ledge onto the equally precarious cobweb, and dashed over the bouncy threads towards their stunned enemies; when they got to the first, Sarevok, in passing, loaded the gnome on top of the spider's back; wherein Jan Jansen started, summarily, to jab the narrow pedicle between the head and the abdomen.

Sarevok himself beheaded another spider; and another; Imoen, on her part, got under the spiders' bloated bellies, and, with quick jabs of the Cutthroat, opened them, dodging the streams of colourless haemolymph flooding out—

Jan Jansen killed his spider the moment the stun spell gave out; his ride spread out flatly on the cobweb with its each leg stretched in a different direction. The rider stood up from his mount quite woozily, to say the least; and only capable of saying, "Ah, home sweet home— Wait, I don't live here…"

Sarevok was eyeing a giant maw. "To tell the truth, sister," he said when Imoen joined him, "I have not the slightest idea what Cernd saw in them."

She thought for a moment; and, in the end, must admit, smirking, "Neither do I, brother."

---

Their next target lay right next to them; it was a tall, round, white structure spun out of spider-silk, where, as Jan Jansen informed them, lived Pai'Na, Bodhi's drow ally.

They moved towards the nest, spreading their hands for balance as they carefully stepped over the stickier threads in the giant cobweb; it was agreed, silently, that Imoen would attempt to convince Pai'Na to switch allegiance before they attacked the drow.

That was not to be.

They entered the building; Pai'Na was there, a dark figure with a quarterstaff, bowing over a human body.

The body was still moaning; its stomach was slit open, and moving with a mass of hatching spiders; Pai'Na cast one look at them, and yelled angrily in her own tongue; Imoen only caught the word _orbb_, spider, before Pai'Na started to cast a spell, and the spiderlets started to pour out of the body; and the others.

Imoen was the closest to the woman; she skewered her on her blade without mercy before that one finished her spell.

Pangur and Altair took great pleasure in hunting the small spiders as the siblings, in silence, cut the throats of the living hatcheries.**Tast'd nice**, Pangur decided as he munched them.

---

They left the circular structure in silence, after a perfunctory search through the pockets of the dead; before Imoen asked, "Which way now, Master Jansen?"

"Yes," her brother added, pensively, "To that inner sanctuary?"

The gnome seemed, for the first time during the trek, rather disoriented about the path. He stopped, sniffed the air, turned around, once, twice, thrice; and, in the end, said, "That way— You know," he said, hopefully, "I've had this little problem ever since I was a wee gnome. When it gets dark, everybody glows red. Frightens a child something fierce…"

The siblings looked at each other over the top of the bald head; in the end, the brother sighed. "You just do love the sound of your own voice, don't you, gnome?"

Jan Jansen looked him straight in the eyes, and said, "My own voice? Heartless man! Do you not know? I am deaf. I have never heard the sound of my own voice. I read lips…" He gave a small sob. "Only lips…"

In the end, out of sheer hysteria, they laughed.

Then, Imoen looked up from the thick white strands below her feet, and froze. "Light, brother."

---

The chamber on the other side of the grotto was a gallery, long, tall and narrow, like an antechamber to an audience room; it had a golden sandstone floor with a blood-red carpet on it, leading straight to the dark opening across the hall; torches burning in torch-holders on the walls, between the blunt arches of the blind sandstone doors; and, in two rows on both sides of the carpet, an honour guard of helms, swords and shields hanging freely in the empty air, lending shape to non-existent bodies.

"Grimwarders," Sarevok said as they halted in the opening.

"Right," Imoen replied. "We are guests of Bodhi, brother. Do you think they care?"

He smirked. "_I_ don't, sister— You three, stay behind."

The invisible statues hadn't yet made a move; they started to cast their spells.

The first two hit the two closest statues in concert, revealing shape as they turned air into stone; and at that signal, the rest of the warders stirred. Sarevok managed one incantation more before he must move forth to protect Imoen's spell-casting.

That was an ill-wish, a magic malison; and so, Imoen calmly sent forth her chromatic orbs, purple and oily black, pointing them at the statues' helms and, if she hit, freezing them in their moves. She would not be interrupted; the only sounds in the room were her own eldritch words, and the steady clang of metal on metal as her brother worked his trade, with few, spare, small, almost unnoticeable moves of the wrist placing his long blade always exactly where she needed it.

When they were finished, they left behind a gallery of stone statues, frozen in a variety of poses.

---

They smashed the statues, of course; they were not so presumptuous as to think that no one might revive them again; and, as Imoen discovered by accident, they shattered fairly easily.

"Well," she said when, covered in marble dust, they approached the doorway, "Now, it's time to speak with Mistress Bodhi."

"You three," she looked at the disconsolate gnome, cat and eagle, "Stay behind. I'm serious."

**Sheesh. Why di'tcha take us with if we can' go wi' ya anyplace?**

_**Master?**_

"Otherwise, I believe, you would have had a right to call yourselves excluded," Sarevok replied, aloud. "In other words, we need guardians. Stay here, and don't let him move. Not a whit."

"You do remember our promise, Master Jansen?" Imoen asked.

"Yes, lass, I do," the gnome sighed, seating himself on a smashed Grimwarder, pulling his spectroscopes down on his eyes, and some trinket out of his pouch, "Well, good luck to you both, I suppose. Remember, I'm waiting for my story! Here's hoping for a decent ending!"

---

They cast their shields and protections, this time, using precious magic, and drank their potions; and, at least in the sister's case, feeling, this time, some small trepidation, moved in through the last, short, low corridor.

The chamber on the other side of the passage must be some architect's mad dream; it was tall—a hall more than a chamber—with a tall dais in the middle, opposite the entrance, and the promise of passages to the left and right of it, reachable by stairs set under the side walls; still more doors opened in the far wall under the gallery. The space in front was filled almost randomly; here was a long, rectangular table with wooden chairs around it; there, large globes filled with swirling purple light were set on sandstone plinths; elsewhere were torches, lit and unlit; a mount of colourful silken pillows sat under a wall; under another, several dark caskets; in a corner, a mirror; spikes and hooks were set freely in the gold flake and the mosaics painted on the walls; some of them carried impaled fresh, rotting bodies; others, ancient skeletons— And, in the floor, there were large pools filled with—

"Blood," Imoen whispered as they stepped carefully down the wide path between the two nearest ponds; the stench was horrible, and stirred her own lust; and, in the penumbra under the painted sky of a millennium ago, the place was completely—

They were in the pools, of course.

---

Slimy, blood-covered, contorted faces; bulging eyes, long fangs, long claws reaching from the depths, through the crimson mists of blood; Sarevok cut the head off the first one as soon as she emerged; he drove his sword up; he parted in two an incarnadine spray— His fire shield protected him, as hers protected her; the first vampire which dared touch her must douse her whole arm in the blood to quench the fire.

They were half-flying, half-floating to her now, trying to surround her, to corner her, to drain life from her— She felt the Lifestealer return to her all that was stolen; she finished her casting; she set the chamber on sun-fire.

The wall of flames was as tall as human, and spreading forth from her as fast as sound; whatever it touched, it lit up; she elbowed the nearest survivor of the conflagration into the still-burning table; kicked another into a torch; drove the next into a wall, and staked him; recast her missing stone-skins; cut, through sheer reflex, through a crimson curtain; downed a potion—

A contingency cracked: Tenser's Transform, a meagre replacement for her brother's innate might. He grew in size—still; in strength—still; in skill—still; he turned about; threw off the burning creature which had leapt at his back; now, swiftly, a stake, a splash, a backhand jab—

Five vampires in front, blocking the view; another wall of sun-fire; it was getting hot in the room, now: the burning feather pillows joined the burning table; she drew on her divine powers to protect her, further, and gutted a vampire before toppling him, screeching, onto the mount— A vampire? No, she thought, watching the twisted face, these were not vampires. These were only servants, vampire spawn; animals, operating on instinct only— Someone was playing with them, here. She spun round; with her magic missiles, sent another monster, kicking, at a convenient spike; spun round, again, to yell her warning—

Her brother, beset by a screaming horde, still had not moved from his initial post between the steaming blood-ponds; she wiped sweat off her forehead, and, from her eye, a stray lock of sweaty hair; she put her burning hands on a shred of vampire mist; she would send a fireball straight at him, but the spawn gathered round her, again; and she released her third, roaring, circle of sun-fire; one of the magic globes exploded from the heat, and, through the hot, quivering air, she saw how her brother, for a moment, closed his own eyes; how he opened them; how the sunstone on his helm burst in an explosion of sunlight, adding brilliance to the fire blazing around them.

For a moment, all was light; light and high vampire shriek; then, slowly, the whiteness paved way to the afterimage, to the negatives-of-colours burned on the retina; then, even that flushed away, like water after a rain, and vision returned in full— Of heat, and a bewildered sibling, and an inferno. Most of the vampires had turned into dust under the sunlight; or, dazed, had wandered into the fire, and were now walking around, spreading fire, burning; only two or three were still meandering about, wildly, untouched—

Sarevok looked at her; coughing, breathing rapidly in the hot, rarefied air, they got, weakly, to the last undead, overturned them, and, kneeling over them, staked them amidst the flames and the stench of boiling blood.

They heard the clapping.

---

They looked up; Mistress Bodhi was standing over them, over the fire, on the high ramp; for it must be she.

She was not tall; shorter than Imoen herself; and that surprised the half-human, at first—before she recalled that Bodhi had been an elf; and she made up for this amply with impossibly high heels and highly gathered hair. And she did have an obsession with black leather. The Dark Queen, indeed, crossed lazily Imoen's mind. The sister of her torturer.

She spoke, as, silently, both Bhaalspawn, leaning on the Edge of Chaos, stood up; Imoen had grabbed Sarevok's hand to share her healing energies among the both of them— Her voice was… girlish. And playfully delighted; and that was the most favourable of the things one could say about it.

"Well, mousies, wasn't this the most wonderful game of run and chase across Amn?" she laughed. "I certainly enjoyed it! But now, you have, at last, come to my lair. How do you like it?" She looked around the burning fires, and added, quickly, "Don't get too cosy. We are soon leaving, after all."

"We," Imoen said, pointedly, "are going nowh—"

"We," Sarevok interrupted his sister, "have come to you, Mistress. Why shan't you come down to us?"

The vampire looked down on him, and laughed. "Well, why shouldn't I?"

She leapt down to them.

She landed gracefully, in a half-crouch, in her high heels, before them; as any casual show-off in the presence of a kindred with a much better act, Imoen, internally, groaned. But Bodhi straightened, and let her guests inspect her, up close, in silence.

The triangular, fox-like elven face was all there, but masked by the loose strands of the black hair; so were, though much better concealed by the high do, the pointed tips of an elf's ears. The eyes were black, not blue, in the alabaster skin, over the small, perky nose, the pale, darkened lips, the fangs, the claws, the body— Bodhi was wearing a long overcoat; under it, a tightly laced bodice, those riding boots, and—

Imoen could not restrain herself any further. "It's you!" she spurted out. "You were there, in Irenicus' place! Sarevok almost killed you when we were escaping."

Bodhi smiled, predatorily, at her. "It takes," she giggled, and burst out into a spray of mist, "a bit more," she said, into their ear, and, as they turned round, burst into a flock of bats, whose leathery wings promptly flew offensively close to their faces, "than a weak try from a half-starved child to kill a vampire, Imoen," she finished, standing back in her original spot, with her hands back on her arched hips. "Even when that child is a Child of Murder… and a little, scared girl's," her sparkling eyes shifted, "much bigger brother. Well," she giggled, again, as she passed springily between them, grabbing their hands, and, with her vampire strength, nearly tearing them off their sockets, "come, Children! My own brother is waiting for you in Spellhold. Irenicus will be so surprised!"

"Have you ever heard of Suldanessellar, Bodhi?"

She froze, let go of their hands, and, revealing her fangs, snarled over her shoulder. "Who told you about it?"

Why Sarevok's blind shot alarmed her so, there was no telling; Imoen followed. "Why is the elf Joneleth called Irenicus, the Shattered One, Bodhi?"

Faster than eye, she whirled into a low, defensive crouch, ready to claw them. "Who— What—? How do you— It doesn't matter," she straightened, recovering her composure and the pretence of haughty civility both, "Trust me. It doesn't. I'll tell you on the way. Irenicus— Jon— He is waiting," she finished, forcefully, fixating her gaze on Sarevok.

He intercepted it, with a snake's unblinking gaze. "Jon may be waiting… but we are not going anywhere, Bodhi," he explained, word after word, slowly, as, slowly, step by step, he stepped towards the mouse trapped in the reptilian charm, unable to escape.

Imoen would not interrupt; she almost wanted to laugh; he was charred, and scarred, and dirty, and carrying a freaking large sword, and Bodhi could not tear her eyes away from him— But why had the sum of knowledge they possessed to upset their enemy upset her—that—much?

Something snapped; Bodhi broke the eye contact; her eyes darted to Imoen, and back, to the man with the sword. "Oh, yes you are!" the peeved little girl announced. "Yes, you are!"

She looked up, and around the gallery. "Parissa! Valen! Del! Anomen!"

There was a sudden, horrible vacuum inside Imoen's stomach.

She turned around; she had heard correctly.


	46. VI: Check, 5

_Today, the run of poetry, whether epic or lyrical, ends. 's been fun, for me, but one can only be pretentiously erudite for a time till one gets bored. (And how horribly pretentious is --that--?)_

**

* * *

****Siblings**

**Part VI: Check**

**5**

They gave Anomen a quick second death: Sarevok cut off his head; Imoen staked the falling body.

The priority fulfilled, they could be reasonable again; he found himself facing Valen; she, still kneeling, the bald, sexless Parissa. Del was the wizard; and her first move in the fight was to silence Imoen with a word of power.

She wasted the spell, Imoen thought, viciously; they had been arrogant, Sarevok and she; she had almost no magic on her now. Her potions-enhanced strength was fading; her spell-increased speed was dying; her stone-skins were few, at the latest count; she had dropped the Cutthroat when she had thrust the stake— She drew the Lifestealer, and, when the vampire caught her, she jabbed it into the stomach, through the loose white shirt and the leather-like skin.

Then, as the vampire bit her, she watched with great satisfaction how the dagger in her hand stole stolen life; how the tight, cold grasp around her weakened; how Parissa shrunk and shrivelled on her eyes, unable to comprehend what was happening to it— Soon, she could wriggle herself out completely, and stake it out of its misery.

By her, Sarevok, snarling, rammed a stake into a silver breast; then, he, too, turned round, to face Del— Two Dels, each one wrapped in her own spell-armour; each one casting her own stun-spell; the siblings dashed to the truth and the simulacrum, and started to jab wildly against their stone-skins; the symbol of stun failed to materialise; the power word failed against Sarevok's rage.

He looked horrible; he disappeared, leaving Imoen alone against Bodhi.

That one eyed with disbelief the demise of her last lackey; but, too soon, focused her furious gaze on the Bhaalspawn— The first punch knocked the air out of Imoen's lungs; the first round kick sent her flying to the floor, and, by a hair's breath, into a fire.

Her ribs must be broken; she reached for a healing potion; she heard the high heels stepping slowly on the floor; she saw them by her face; then, Bodhi was crouched over her.

Delicately, with attention and care, the vampire stopped her hand on the potion flask, and pulled the Lifestealer from the other palm, tightly clenched. "My little mouse," she crooned, stroking Imoen's cheek. "My little, scared mouse… Where is your brother? Tell me."

It took all of Imoen's restraint not to draw her power into herself; instead, she carefully moulded her ill-wish into a fist-sized, jet-black slime of sheer spite and wrath, and aimed it at Bodhi.

The curse of doom hit the vampire, unerringly, between the eyes, and right on time; a heart's-beat before Sarevok's spell; and then, his fist.

"She will not escape now," her brother said, coldly, eyeing the vampire under his control as, in his hands, Nalia's scroll turned into dust. "And now, sister… Forgive me. However, leave."

---

**Wossgoin' on?**

_**The master is unhappy. Why is he angry? Have you not won?**_

Imoen took a deep breath; her head hurt, suddenly, and out of tune with the phantom pain remaining within her chest.

She opened her eyes, and unclenched her fists. "Fine," she said, aloud. "Do you remember Anomen?"

**M' f'rst catch!**

_**The master's friend. Your friend.**_

"That paladin boy?"

The gnome had lifted his head and was watching her curiously through his spectroscopes from over his trinkets; she walked the last few steps into the antechamber, dropped her weapons next to her bow, sat down on the floor, drawing her legs to herself, and said, carefully, "Master Jansen… You'd better watch out how you say what you say right now. Please."

---

They heard a high scream cut short from the inner sanctuary.

"No turnips?" Jan Jansen made sure.

She smiled, a bit, and shook her head. "No turnips, Master Jansen."

The gnome made a deep, slow nod. "No turnips, then," he declared officiously. "—Not that I remember that much, lass, much to my chagrin and a great harm to my reputation as an honest storyteller… 'Twas when Valen—the silver-haired nymph, albeit a bit more drawn to blood than nymphs usually tend to be—"

"We've met her," Imoen interrupted, tiredly.

"—Oh. I see. In short, the corpse dragged me from the Copper Coronet, here, see? Boy, was that odd! Like walking through a happy, rosy mist, except that there was no happy, rosy mist in the air that night… which probably accounts for why we found ourselves here so fast. Anyway. I'd seen that boy earlier, in the Coronet. He didn't look much like a Holy Insufferable One then—he had his steel can, all right, I'll grant you that, but he didn't entirely stink of holiness, if you know what I mean, lass? But Garoll said—" He must see Imoen's face, because he continued, hastily, "We came to the kirkyard, and I started to have second thoughts about this whole till-death-do-us-part business. Not the pleasantest location, not by a long shot. Except that I, ah, couldn't really let myself out—"

"Valen had you charmed," Imoen nodded.

The gnome coughed. "Yes. Not the most inspiring moment of my life, lass, to realise that the woman of my life didn't care for my nose half the bit she cared for a bit of me, if you catch my drift. So, where was I? Ah. We come to the entrance upside. Valen turns to open it. I see the man again, behind a grave, watching the vamp. He moves, like he wants to leave. He looks at me again, and—"

Imoen groaned.

The gnome looked at her sympathetically. "Well, Valen's attention was, shall we say, a bit preoccupied at that specific juncture, so I remember this part better. He almost banged her brains off, lass. He had this very shiny mace, see? Illithium-coated, by the looks of it. They couldn't touch it, so, later, the Mistress told me to drop it into one of the blood pools, and I got my fair look at it. Very heavy. Must be illithium. Doesn't like to be soiled, they say. Of course, they say the same thing about Uncle Scratchy's underwear, and I know firsthand—"

There was another high, ear-piercing shriek from the inner room.

Imoen returned to the gnome. "It was Bodhi, wasn't it?"

Jan sighed. "She had him on the ground in no time, armour and all, and was sitting on top of him, perched on him like she likes—"

"Liked," Imoen corrected, coldly. The shrieks were dying, slowly.

"So, she has him pinned," Jan Jansen went on, heedless of the interruption, "and then, stuck under her as he is, red on the face, because she's throttling him, of course, he yells out, at the top of his voice, 'Helm! Protect me!' And then you know what happens, lass?"

He let the question hang in the air for a heartbeat, before finishing, "Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nil. Nada. Zilch. Not even the tiniest spark of divine might coming at full speed to help the hero at the critical moment."

"Now, me, lass," the gnome picked up, in a grim tone, "I'm the first one to appreciate a good practical joke. And I always say, in my opinion, the high and mighty would do well with a bit more sense of humour. But, as it so happens, your friend was looking at me, then. Must've thought I'd taken off during the fight. Wish I could. The look on his face, then— There's jokes, lass, and then, there's nasty jokes," Jan Jansen summed up, abruptly, and fell silent.

---

Altair and Pangur were sitting quietly on their haunches in the entrance to the inner sanctuary, watching.

The eagle turned her head when she saw Imoen.

_**Kakaru toki**_

_**sakoso inochi no**_

_**oshikarame**_

_**kanete nakimi to**_

_**omoishirazuba**_

_**Had I not known that I was dead already, I would have mourned the loss of my life.**_

Imoen looked at her for a moment in silence; then, with a sudden viciousness she had not expected from herself, said, "Poetry has answers to everything, doesn't it, Altair?"

The familiar considered for a moment; in the end, she lowered her head. _**I am… shamed. Forgive.**_

**She's jus' sad. Yer sad, too. I'm feelin' sadness. Don' be sad.**

_**A word of warning. Menin aeide thea. Come, Beloved. We've a task to fulfil.**_

Imoen frowned as the familiars passed her by, returning to their assigned station; she half-expected Sarevok to be, indeed, raging; sitting on the floor by Anomen's body, with closed eyes and no helm on his head, he was not.

He wiped off the few tears when he heard her enter; he must be rather surprised at the sight of the alien substance on his dirty hand, because he studied it, suffused with light like the precious jewel, for quite a long moment before he laughed.

"One tear fell for every murdered soul, and our Father gathered them all," he intoned. "Help me, sister. We must take the body to the Ilmatari."

Anomen had not changed much since they had last seen each other; and repeat death had even released that sick snarl with which he had first greeted them, again, that vampiric, pervert face within the boyish locks and some slight stubble over Tazok's old plate, now pierced through by her stake—and smoothened his brow into something akin to peace; though the fangs had not disappeared. "Why the Ilmatari, brother?" she asked, spreading on the blood-smeared floor their cloaks, mustering as coldly analytical tone as possible.

We must tie the head to the body, somehow, she thought, It will look ridiculous otherwise.

"Because, sister," her brother replied, flatly, moving to help her, "If he is here, then this means that he has abandoned his post; that he has no place among his people and that his people will not take him; and that I," a powerful ripple recoiled through his muscles before Sarevok finished, "should have killed him earlier; when we first met and you stopped me— And because Ilmater owes us."

She started. "What do you mean, brother, owes us?"

He flashed a brief, weary half-smile to her. "All of Amaunator's temple was an Ilmatari plot, sister— Aerie was there, in Imnesvale, as an Ilmatari agent. Except that I played her part—" His face grew hard, again. "He owes us. Me. Us."

Then, he outright sneered. "Aerie told me that The Broken One is always ready to help those in need. Let him prove his word, then. If mine is useless."

Imoen felt blood flow away from her face. "Don't," she said coldly.

Sarevok looked at her with blazing eyes. "Don't turn this precious moment into a spectacle of arrogance, you mean, sister? I cannot. There is also such a thing as an excess of meekness— Iam not an Ilmatari."

She looked at that other body, split from crotch to neckline, with the small breasts lying flatly on both sides of the opened ribcage, the heart less carved than simply torn out of it, and the gizzards drawn out and tied around the neck and hips; at the cut off hands and legs; at the severed head, lying somewhat off, to the side, pinned to the ground with two spikes through the tips of the pointed ears, with gouged eyes, knocked out teeth, and the skull neatly scalped around the top; at the acid burns, chars and bruises on the alabaster skin; the work of a man who did not see much use for torture as a means to extract information, but who, this time, simply had no questions to ask— "You've had your revenge, brother. I was his friend, too."

"I," Sarevok replied, heavily, "swore to protect him for the length of our travels, sister. And I left him— I left him. And yet, here he is. Why do you think he found himself here, sister? Bodhi didn't know who he was. But Mielikki said that we would be too late, and we were in Imnesvale then. Our meeting here was no accident— He must have remembered my promise to Lassal, and come here as soon as they left him alone— No," he snarled, starting to his feet, sword in hand, "That is too much. We demand their death as proof of our love. That is fair. That is the rule— But the terms of engagement must be obeyed on all parts."

She could not believe her ears. "'Life isn't fair,' Sarevok? So says the man who threw gauntlet to prophecy and pledged that Children of Murder would not come to blows? You're a half-god, brother! You taught me yourself: you can't cast words on the wind and expect it not to sow them!"

He sneered. "Yet I am half-human, too; and, to gods, my will, a laughingstock— Is that it, sister? I left him, I left prison, and, since he is in my return presence, I failed my vow. And I wanted more. Much more. I am guilty, yes— But the set penalty is, for the transgression, death. Death. Not eternity of misery on the Wall of the Faithless! Have I not even the right to demand that much justice, sister?!"

Devoid of argument, she watched him in silence as he cast his vows.

"I, Sarevok, swear on the bitter ashes of my mother and the dead god that is my father, in the name of vengeance and the bitter bile that is my blood— For unjust punishment; for unfair meddling; for bringing trial to a human as no human should be tried— There will never be peace between me and The Vigilant One. May he watch these words, and be damned."

He would watch, Imoen thought, darkly. Spoken by god or human, on the dying embers of a battlefield, amidst pools of blood and the corpses of one's enemies, over the fallen body of a friend slain by one's own hand— He would watch such an oath. They all would. Mielikki. Her own Father, across time, from within dreams.

There were mortal witnesses. On the threshold, three figures; and among them, bright-eyed, slack-jawed, stunned in his motion, a gnome whom Sarevok had promised an unforgettable tale— It would live, she knew with certainty; it would be told; it would be passed; and, with the same absurd sureness, she knew it would not even be very much warped.

—When they were leaving the hall, she looked, by accident, at the mirror standing in the corner. There was a sliver of ice-blue in it which shook her to the core.

---

The priest was waiting for them; drenched in rainwater, he was standing on the doorstep of the small shrine. "I was told to expect you," he said as he greeted them with a small bow.

They bowed in return. "Will your master take him?" the brother asked. "He has suffered."

"His last act was an act of mercy," the sister added; then, pushing lightly forth a bewildered gnome, "Our friend can tell the story."

The priest looked at the oddest funeral procession he had ever seen; even the thoroughly soaked cat was watching him back with the same sharp, determined look on his muzzle. "I can offer you no certainty."

The woman looked at the man; the two humans consulted each other silently for a moment; in the end, the man said, "Yes. We know."

They followed the priest into the shrine, to a sturdy wooden stand; there, the brother put down the body, and they started to unwrap the dark shroud. The fangs were what first made the Ilmatari start; the body was perfectly preserved; so that was why— "There is a ring here," he noted.

Another silent consultation. "We… will take it," the woman said. "You should notify the House Delryn. And Sir Ryan Trawl of the Radiant Heart. He may wish to know. This will cost you."

Several frozen tears were dropped on the table next to the body. "Is this enough?" the man asked; they represented the rough equal of the shrine's yearly rent on Waukeen's Promenade.

"I am more interested in the thawed sort," the priest smiled. "But my master endeavours to take away all pain and suffering. It will be enough."

The man returned the smile. "I would take him to my home, priest, if I could. But I do not know the way… and it is not a pleasant place. He would not enjoy it there, I believe."

"There are Ilmatari paladins, aren't there?" the woman was anxious to know—

---

"So, how do you mean to start your great revenge against a very old deity, brother?"

The rain had abated; they put Jan Jansen and the tired familiars to sleep, asked Pugney for some strong alcohol, and, in silent agreement, climbed the wet scaffolding overlooking Waukeen's Promenade until they found a board wide enough to sit on. The rest of the night would be calm; there were no vampires in Athkatla now, and, if some guard found curious the sight of a known outlaw drinking his friend's wake with his sister in the very heart of Amn, they had a very good story to tell.

In fact, Sarevok looked remarkably peaceful for someone who had just been told by an ordinary priest that his maybe-would-be-one-day-… and so on, and so forth—was being offered no certainty, and only the hope; this irked her; even when she had told him a carefully edited version of Jan Jansen's last tale, he had barely given a hint of reaction. He must be already plotting the settling of his scores, she first decided; then, decided that it was an uncharitable thought; perhaps he was merely, somewhat, at peace— It still irked her that the 'somewhat' was 'that much'—

"With the way his clergy behaves in Maztica, it will not be difficult," he now answered, taking a deep swig from his moonshine bottle.

"Oh, so it will be a political thing, won't it?" Imoen asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Yes. It will be a slow thing, sister," Sarevok agreed easily. "I have no quarrel with his people, sister. Only with him— But don't lets talk of it. To be crude, eyes are watching. When were you going to tell me what was happening to you?"

She froze. "What do you mean, what was happening to me, brother?"

"I saw you during the fight. You are changed, sister… Stronger."

"I am not the one who burst out in a nova, brother."

He greeted the half-jest with a half-smile. "Yes. There may be some truth to Amaunator's blabber, after all. Murder needs only be one of our aspects after we ascend— Though we will always have to deal with it, will we not? You have not answered my question, sister."

"I—" She hesitated. "What's it like, there, brother? Your place? You said it wasn't pleasant… But what's it like?"

He frowned. "My home, you mean?"

She blinked. "You call that place your home? For real? Not just—" She waved her hand about; it was difficult to explain.

He looked at her confusion, perplexed. "Why not, sister? Where else?"

Still frowning, she took a quaff from her own long-necked bottle. "Well," she said, slowly; then, taking in the dark, quiet night oval of Waukeen's Promenade below them, she proposed, "How about… here?"

He smiled, briefly. "Two-thirds of the time, and after I deal with a sect of irate paladins… maybe. One-third of the time, for the past—ten, twelve years, perhaps?— There. The longest I have ever stayed anywhere in my life, I believe. You still have not answered my question, sister."

She took another deep swig, just to lend herself courage; the result was still garbled. "Father's really left me. I've a pocket plane."

"Oh." A swig. "You were afraid to tell me."

She frowned. "Afraid—?" She must admit, "Well, yes, maybe— A bit. I thought you might get jealous. Although— I think I just mostly wanted to have some time alone to think about it, brother. Talk to Mazzy, maybe. What I'm supposed to do about it."

"Jealous," he repeated pensively; she definitely didn't like the sound of that; then, as if clearing his head, he shook it, rubbed his eyes, and went for the bottle, "Yes. Of course. How did you shape it?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You are jealous!"

Doggedly, he refused to return her look. "Perhaps you are correct, sister," he said, calmly, clenching his fists until the knuckles were white. "Perhaps I am jealous— You wanted to know what my home is like. It is… pain, and defeat, and loss. Loss— Father delights in bringing defeat to me. My home has turned against me, my," for a moment, he sought a word, before settling on, "squire—" Suddenly, he snarled. "You have everything, and I, Sarevok, am reduced to this! Perhaps, indeed, I am jealous— You know that I am in pain, sister," he finished, suddenly, looking at her. "Help me."

She watched him for a moment in silence; but, in the end— "I can't, brother— It wouldn't work for you, anyway," she added quickly; then, anticipating the volley of questions, "It's Irene who did it, she didn't exactly tell me how, and she said you threw her out, anyway."

He laughed. "I did not— You will not help me, then?"

"I can't help you, brother— And she said you did."

"I let her go, sister. Insofar as I could—"

"Oh. Another case of not paying attention to your own words, then— Sarevok, do you really think it's the right moment for a petty squabble? Or have you decided that, the gent dead, vengeance sworn, the corpse buried, we can move on to your next pain?"

The extremely lengthy moment was ended only by a frigid, "You are drunk, sister."

She took offence. "I am drunk?! I am not the one in this family who has trouble with spirits!"

"As presently evidenced," her brother snapped. "Come, sister. Sober yourself."

She refused to be budged. "Alcohol and men, brother. Your doom. Meagre replacements for murder. But you end up killing them, anyway— Tell me, have you finally decided if you have killed Anomen, or if your horrible destiny has done this, or if you should have killed him sooner? I'm curious, you know— Will you return to Aran, now? Or into the lap of a blond, elven, all-forgiving Ilmatari faith?"

He hit her, then. The Windspear signet drew blood from her cheek.

"Do kindly refrain from being ridiculous, sister. Aerie—"

Her first impulse was to draw her sword; halfway out of the sheath, she decided that she would not give him that satisfaction. Instead, she laughed.

"And you think, brother, that the paladins will let stay Rieltar Anchev's son in Amn any more than they will let stay a Son of Murder?" She shook her head. "If only you had had the good sense to remain a… thug."

She rolled her eyes, sobered herself, and started to climb down the platform.

---

"Sarevok?"

She was walking amidst the cream muslin curtains billowing on the late-morn zephyr, searching for her brother.

**Chick's gone.**

Pangur was running about with a wild look in his eyes, sliding under the beds and scratching the doors of cupboards, as if he expected to find Altair there— She was gone. So was the Edge of Chaos. The Chaos Blade. Half of their jewels. One bag of holding. A spell-book. An armour; a helm; a pair of kidskin gloves— Some clothes— The journals of research were still there; so were the finer accoutrements. There was only one conclusion to draw.

She almost ran into the side room where they had put Jan Jansen and his gear. They were also missing.

The guards let her pass without a question; Aran Linvail was waiting for her; he stood up as soon as he saw her.

"He came here," he related quickly, "drunk and raging, unlike himself— He smashed things, threatened my people, forbid me to contact you—"

"And you listened to him?!"

"Imoen, in the state he was in— He threatened to kill me, and he almost killed two of my people when they tried to stop him," the Shadowmaster said, still slightly bewildered. "What was I to do? You didn't see him—"

She was not interested in the excuses. "Where is he now, Aran?"

"He left Jansen here— He is here, if you wish to talk to him—"

"Later, maybe. Where is he?"

"He left you a letter."

"A letter?"

The Shadowmaster handed her a scroll. The handwriting was sharp, spiky, neat and familiar.

_Sister,_

_I have spoken to Garoll. He has found for you a company of some twenty able men, notably under the leadership of a Captain Arat and his nephew Cernick; they will be waiting for you in Arnise within a se'nnight's time, and will wait for a se'nnight forth. They boast a fair repute, and Cernick, in particular, expressed interest in remaining in the castle as the head of guard._

_They will not charge you extraordinary: five thousand for securing the hold, and another five for the first month's stay, including the fee for the basic instruction of the permanent garrison. Nalia should be able to afford it easily._

_Select documents previously in Isaea Roenall's possession have already been delivered to his immediate superior, Chief Inspector Brega; you may tell Nalia that the Lady Delcia Caan is safe, although her reputation may suffer a slight— Allegedly, less for her involvement with Roenall, which the Inspector understands to be nonexistent, than for her vehement defence of the deceased's purity of name, lineage, and, henceforth, soul. However, I leave it to Nalia to protect her public character and sever her bonds with her fiancé— She will manage, I believe. _

_Aran will not charge you for Caan's shadows. They will guard her for as long as she stays in Athkatla, or Nalia contacts her, whichever comes first._

_Aran also promised to let you have Grasshopper, if you wish him._

_The Windspear lands, I believe, are cursed… However. There are two immediate candidates in the line of succession: Kriemhild and you. Since Amnish laws prohibit the inheritance of noble titles by orcs and orcish descendants in up to the fourth generation, the title and the fee are, unequivocally, yours. Any bureaucratic divination will confirm this, should you request it; Nalia should be able to find you a competent legal representative— In the unlikely case you neither wish to claim the land for yourself nor are allowed to adjoin it to the d'Arnise fief, may I advise you to consider Corthala as your seneschal and successor? Since he is of noble birth, you will find the process of transference of the barony substantially facilitated; if you fail to name a fitting heir, the lands will be forfeit to the Council of Six._

_I take the liberty to retain the Windspear signet._

_Fare well._

_Your brother,_

_Sarevok_

She read the letter twice, with Pangur sitting on her shoulder gazing intently at the mass of wriggly black ink, as if he still hoped to catch Altair somewhere on the inside of it.

"I don't understand," she said, in the end, looking at the Shadowmaster. "Where is he?"

"He spent the night here, and sailed off with the morning breeze," Aran Linvail replied, looking at her curiously.

"Sailed off? To where?"

"To Brynnlaw."

For a moment, she still could not understand. "What's in Brynnlaw—?" Then, it hit her. "Spellhold."

The Shadowmaster was watching her with something not unlike pity; she felt her face harden.

"Fine," she said. "If that's how he likes it. Pangur, we're leaving."

**End of Part VI: Check.**


	47. VII: Countercheck, 1

**Siblings**

**Part VII: Countercheck**

**1**

A month passed.

Imoen, seventh Baroness Windspear, was standing atop the battlements of the d'Arnise Hold. The night was warm, and the faint sound of the music from the torch-lit courtyard reached her even here, on the castle's highest tower. The new moon had been two days ago, and—

"Here you are! I have been looking for you everywhere, love… I was about to lose my spirits _completely_ when Auntie suggested I might find you here—"

Nalia, the freshly instated duchess of the d'Arnise fiefdom, emerged from the door wearing fineries of heraldic blue and gold, a scent of vanilla, and a look of concern. Imoen, herself now wearing a light rose ball-gown, though with a neckline cut considerably higher than her friend's, turned around and grinned.

"I got tired of being jealous watching you with young Vulova, vixen," she declared empathetically, "Or who was it this time? Argrim?"

They kissed, slowly and sweetly and hotly; but soon, remembered that they were, after all, at the top of the d'Arnise Hold, on the eyes of all— They parted; and Nalia said, reluctantly, "Please… don't."

"Don't—what, exactly?" Imoen asked.

"The servants are worrying, _minette_," Nalia replied, with puckered mouth, "They are beginning to call you the Moon Lady— Oh, Imoen, you know me," she sighed, suddenly, "I'm no Aerie. If I can notice something—"

"Notice what, exactly?" her girlfriend repeated, with deadly calm.

Nalia crooked her head and sighed, evidently calling to Imoen's common sense to avoid talking about matters obvious to them both. "You barely sleep, _minette_. You wait until you think I'm asleep, and then— It's half the pain if you stay in the castle, but Metigo said you wander the grounds, hunting—"

"I _am_ a Daughter of Murder, Nalia."

The statement cut through the air like an icicle; her enemies would be surprised seeing how deeply the normally assured Nalia d'Arnise flushed. "Yes," she said hurriedly, "yes, love, of _course_ you are— But I can't help but think… Before Father died… Before Isaea— I used to do the same thing. To escape. To the servants' rooms. To the ramparts. To the village. To the forest—"

Suddenly, Imoen's brow smoothed. "Nalia, are you telling me you're worried that you're keeping me here against my will?" She shook her head. "Silly little vixen. You should have told me earlier what was worrying you! I'm no Aerie, either… I just have trouble sleeping, that's all. It's awfully cold inside these stone walls, and the nights are warm. That's it. Now," her face took on an impish grin, "come here, you, and make me warm before we get back to that ballroom and Auntie introduces me to another suitor to a baroness' hand— Or a duchess'."

---

—Mazzy Fentan had been livid.

They had met with the Captain Arat in the abandoned village of Arnise; set at the foot of the castle, and conceived to service it, the hamlet had shared its fate when Isaea Roenall had disbanded the garrison which protected it and dismissed the servants which lived in it. There was no money to be earned on the new yuan-ti masters; only blood to be lost to their dark rituals. The peasants had chosen to seek another fate, elsewhere.

Further progress, Imoen told Mazzy, was arrested; the snake-folk, cunning as always, had, despite the good Captain's best attempts to prevent it, noticed the gathering in the forest and the village, and had drawn up the bridge which crossed the dry moat in front of the castle. Archers, carrying tall masterwork longbows, strolled the lower ramparts; Imoen, protected from missiles and enchanted weapons inside her stone-skins, had approached the hold close enough to draw some fire to herself, to check what manner of enchantments the shooters had on their arrows— She was promptly forced to retreat when several breaching spells, shot from several directions at once, hit her instead. The sound of divinations chased her as she escaped under her cover of invisibility.

"Them adders are smart," the Captain Arat gruffly admitted when she asked him about the habits of their enemy. "There's bound to be traps inside there, milady. Traps and ambushes and spell-spewers. They never attack you up close if they don't have to. And if they have to, the weakest—them's those as look the most human, milady—attack first. The half-bloods next, and then, the snake-folk proper."

Imoen frowned. "Half-bloods? Proper snakes? What are you talking about, captain? I thought—"

Captain Arat shrugged. "Some of them snakes look more like snakes. Some more like human. Some've skin, some've scales, some've patches of this and patches of that. Some of their women hatch eggs, and some've proper breasts, women-like, except it's poison, not milk, they spill out. Those that've scales change colour, and them as have snake heads bite—"

"You mean… they aren't all the same?" Imoen asked. "How do they—" She considered, and bit her tongue. It was fascinating, in a morbid way, but, perhaps, she didn't really need to know.

The good Captain gave her a long, lingering look which told her that he knew exactly what she had wanted to ask about; and replied stoically, "Mixed-breed abominations, milady, all, and evil, down to the very marrow of the bone. Never to be reasoned with. Better keep venom serums at hand, if you must go in there with us."

He sighed, and shook his head, before giving the tall shape looming over Arnise another look-over. "—Though there'd better be another way in… Me neither my lads ain't really fancy crossing that moat and climbing those walls straight head on!"

---

There was, indeed, another way in, as Nalia informed them when Mazzy and she joined them in the crumbling remains of the Duke's Head the following day; it was, in fact, the very passage she had used to escape the castle when Isaea Roenall's men had come to claim it, and her, in his name.

Valygar Corthala was with the two women; he would accompany Imoen and Arat's nephew Cernick into the bastion in the early hours of the morning, when the cold-blooded of the yuan-ti would be the most sluggish; following the plan of the hold Nalia had sketched for them, the three of them would get to the machinery which operated the drawbridge, and let everyone else in for the slaughter.

That easily agreed, the party set camp, within sight, but out of earshot, of the mercenaries; who were, on their part, tough, well-armed, many-scarred, noisy, rude, and men to a soul; Imoen agreed secretly that they would serve their purpose—

The ghost village of Arnise boasted some fifty-and-hundred thatched, whitewashed huts standing by paths overgrown with grass and weeds, some of it waist-high; Nalia sighed, again, when they left the inn. The thatches of roofs were ruffled by wind and three-quarters rotten; the occasional apple tree grew unpruned; a colony of bats had taken in possession the attic of the Duke's Head, and a vixen with her young had taken nest in a hut nearby. Swallows flittered about, feeding their young in the nests glued with saliva to the eaves of huts; the houses were more often than not overrun with insects and vermin—

"There is no alternative, Mazzy," Valygar Corthala said, patting Cerebus' head, "You know that. I know that. Nalia and Imoen know that. Why pretend otherwise?"

It was a pleasant evening; cherries, sweet and sour, abounded in the abandoned orchards; it was time to catch up on the news of her friends. If only—

---

"What really happened to Anchev?" Mazzy intruded tersely with the repeat of the first question she had asked as soon as she had seen that Imoen was without her company.

Imoen neatly avoided the awkward topic again by repeating that Sarevok's absence from Arnise had nothing to do with Mazzy's presence in it; that the story was long, and complicated, and that she did not want to bore her friends with it— "The important part, Mazzy, is, he's off to kill Irenicus, so he's not going to be here tomorrow, but he says that Arat will do the job. So, tell me, what's the deal with Cerebus, and where did Valygar get his fancy—wakizashi, I think, the name is, isn't it? And how's Aerie? And Minsc? And Kriemhild?"

It turned out that Kriemhild had moved into Umar's cave; that Minsc was building a house for Aerie on top of Umar's mound—

"It's bound to look pretty strange," Nalia added, without bothering to hide her feel, "She says she wants to combine gnomish illusions with avariel architecture and human materials. The local fir wood and granite. Poor Minsc. He actually has to _act_ upon her caprice—"

Mazzy's voice gained an octave. "There is no need for that, Nalia. Minsc isn't protesting."

"Of course not, Mazzy. He's doing it for his witch, after all," Nalia replied curtly.

Valygar's face twisted into a strange kind of expression Imoen, in the end, decided was supposed to be a lopsided grin from a mug clearly not up to the task. "Better say that he has an excuse to see Kriemhild, Nalia."

Mazzy cast him a dark look which he completely failed to take into consideration as he finished, "Aerie's enlisted her, too, in the construction. Minsc has taken Merella's cottage, himself—"

"—and, obviously, he's very busy elsewhere, too. After all, it falls to him, as the ranger protector, to heal the strained relations between the forest and the village," Mazzy finished, so proudly that Imoen felt compelled to ask, "So, Minsc is… fine?"

That occasioned a silence; in the end, Nalia said, carefully, "He is not very different from what he used to be…"

"He has decided," Mazzy added quickly, "to pick up Anchev's idea of training the farmers. Those local boys Umar," she hesitated for a moment, watching Valygar, and, in the end, obviously decided to go for the truth, "caught are helping him. And the remains of Madulf's people."

"And Kriemhild," Nalia added, pointedly.

"And Aerie," Valygar finished in the exact same tone. "And, of course, Boo."

Imoen smiled, joining in on the transparent attempt to clear the air. "Which brings us right back to the start, doesn't it?"

"To Anchev's absence, that is?" Mazzy Fentan asked sharply.

Imoen, fairly surprised by the sudden hostility, replied calmly, "No, Mazzy. To Cerebus."

The black pointer, listening carefully to the conversation with his muzzle in his master's lap, raised his head when he heard his name, and barked at her, once, questioningly.

**He's askin' ye not to tell on 'im.**

Valygar shrugged, clearly unaware of the communication he had just inspired. "Cerebus? Minister Lloyd gave him to me, in memory of Merella. After I told him I wanted to buy myself a dog."

For a moment, Imoen could not decide what was more curious; the touch of moonlight in the canine coat; that Valygar was so completely unaware of it; or that her cat, sulking ever since they had left Aran Linvail and the Copper Coronet, deigned to share a word with her again.

---

"Sarevok—" Valygar gave his rapt female audience another awkward smile, "told me that my family's fighting style must have been originally devised for a _daishō _pair. Two blades. Without the side-sword, my defence must be lacking. My father had had a similar idea. So, when I found this in Umar's cave—"

He intended to bring the Way of Two Heavens to perfection, he said—or, at least, cleanse it from the errors and the mistakes which had accumulated over the centuries of adapting the style for a single sword. Lending it a modicum of elegance would be a task for his successors, he said—

She followed the former suicide through the vines which had completely overgrown the small hole in the cliff side of the castle—

---

—Later, when they all went to Athkatla, and signed all the necessary papers, and it turned out that Nalia was the proprietor of roughly one-tenth of Amn—or, at least, of the land of Amn—she did ask him whether he would be her heir to Windspear. Valygar agreed; but she almost felt that he did so because the lands were removed but an hour's ride from Trademeet; and that, had she not made her offer, he would be entirely happy with his swords and his dog, striding the lands perfecting his swordsmanship in Mazzy Fentan's eternal company.

They both, Mazzy and he, agreed to oversee the lands while Imoen litigated with Cor Delryn; Mazzy wrote a missive to Nalia in which she described how thoroughly she enjoyed the stay at Garren Windspear's house. _'Exactly the kind of unpretentious rural manor-house in which I can see a minor noble of these lands live,' _she wrote in the torpid hand of one unaccustomed to frequent communiqué. _'The landscape is favourable—'_

Imoen put down the letter. It was too dark to read; Nalia was asleep, so she couldn't really summon a light to add to the dim glow of the candles. And she couldn't even ask Pangur to help her; since Cerebus had left with his master, Pangur had been always out, not talking to her, picking fights with the d'Arnise hounds— Why couldn't the silly cat just try to understand—

In any case, she already knew its contents.

She sighed; she took a look at the magnificent lily-white body stretched alongside her in deep sleep, and she sighed. The carrot hair was scattered on the pillow, and the constellations of small freckles on the breasts and the back were already committed to memory; the fireworks had lit up the sky, the masque had transpired, and _La Paix et La Réjouissance_, _The Peace and The Rejoicing_, had played. There was a rightful Lady back to the Hold. In Arnise, matters were as if Nalia had never left it.

In Arnise, Nalia was different. As soon as the bureaucrats confirmed her identity and her right to her lands, she started to press for the party to return to the Hold; as soon as they returned and Mazzy departed, she sat down with her own officials, and started to settle the complaints and the small feuds gone sour during the year-and-a-half absence of a liege lord from the d'Arnise fiefdom.

A merchant had been waylaid by bandits, and demanded restitution. A new, local-born, guard was caught stealing. A passing cleric of Tempus wanted to settle in the Hold, and must be refused, for Imoen's sake. A maid wanted to marry, and had been promised dowry. Some old dykes had broken, flooding the land (they rode out to inspect them; Cernick, Imoen on Deneb, and Nalia on her new chestnut mare; thankfully, Nalia had not yet asked what had happened to Grasshopper—)

The list was interminable, and Imoen, painfully conscious that soon, she herself would have to deal with the likes of levies and levees—'_There are old mithril mines here,'_ Mazzy was writing in her letter, '_perhaps it would be prudent to have a dwarf surveyor re-examine them?'_—paid careful note to her friend's behaviour on each such an occasion; and, having had the chance to witness the process take course several times already, concluded, with some small surprise, that Nalia had matured—

"I sometimes think that it took having this place taken away from me for me to learn how much a part of me it is," Nalia said, once, before looking around, and adding, with a sigh and a puckered mouth, "Though I really _do_ wish the people didn't have to die for it."

Imoen smiled at the recollection; but then, her mind wandered further through the sleepless night.

She had thought that she had learnt in Sarevok's presence a bit about the lives of the noble and the politic; but—

The d'Arnises were the last extant line of the dukes of Amn. Her brother had casually failed to mention this, as though it were a fact obvious to everyone in Nalia's vicinity; his sister still could not decide how much actual influence it implied. Through losing Nalia, one felt, Isaea Roenall lost one-tenth of Amn; but the country was ruled, definitely so, by the Council of Six.

Nalia's father had managed to escape both the conundrum and the Council's notice through adopting the persona of the genteel patriarch; well-meaning, well-natured, well-intentioned towards his own indentured serfs; but, essentially, concerned mostly with aurochs- and wisent-hunting. Nalia—

Nalia was planning a cadastral reform within five years' time; a taxation reform, within ten. Nalia had detailed schemes and plans, listing her objectives and the dates by which she hoped to accomplish them, hidden in a book bespelled to look like a children's tale called "The Princess."

Nalia would love to know what Sarevok would think of her idea of how best to introduce the idea of tripartite power in Amn: a whole parliament of merchants and peers, and independent courts, answerable only to Torm and Tyr— In a word, Nalia had to ground herself in the extant power structures.

Nalia agreed. Hence, the return visit to an old sectarian hideout under the Athkatlan cemetery.

It had reaped a Book of the Lich Kaza and a Nether Scroll of Nevaziah; and the promise of more. The latter insured Nalia's life from at least one group of interest; the former snuffed out the last fires of the Wizards' internal war, and propelled Nalia straight into the higher echelons of their officialdom. Three Wizards were even now in the Hold, studying the manuscripts in a removed tower—

Nalia would be marrying one day; soon.

"They must trust me, _minette_," she explained, "I have been away for too long, and, even as a Cowled Wizard, I am a mage. It's the simplest way. And, if my plans fail, the lands must have an heir—"

Imoen risked a return glance at the sleeping body. The servants knew, of course; so did Auntie Delcia, who tolerated, if not quite indulged, the recovered niece's juvenile excess; so did, Imoen would bet, half of those charming men the Dowager Lady Caan brought so that Nalia could inspect them as prospective duke-consorts; those who had almost made her jealous dancing with her girlfriend yesterday— Nalia turned onto her back, muttered something, wiped a trickle of saliva from the corner of her mouth, and returned to her dream.

To think that she had almost suggested to Nalia that, perhaps, Valygar—

---

—Valygar was walking in front of her through the cold, dark space. There was a blind wall at the other end of the narrow passage; but Nalia had told them which brick they needed to push to open the hidden door—

"It's this one," he whispered; Imoen put out her conjured light; Valygar pushed the brick; there was the soft click of a lock opening, the loud, heavy noise of a slab of stone moving to the side, and a sudden slew of arrows and magic missiles flying into their face.

A moment later, Imoen was tending to the wounded Cernick. "I told you two to stay behind," she reproached as she pulled out the barbed arrow out of the wound in his shoulder, and fed the shivering, sweating man a poison antidote out of a green-tinted bottle. "It was simply bound to have been discovered by now— Looks like Umar left you more than just a sword," she threw over the shoulder to Valygar.

The man was still eyeing his own hand with deep suspicion. "It moved… by itself," he said, as if he felt particularly pressed to make this observation.

Imoen, on her part, definitely felt pressed to roll her eyes: Valygar had jerked up his free hand in a natural, futile defence, but clearly hadn't been prepared for the trail of silver ripples which followed, condensing the air around him, stopping the arrows, and creating a shimmering shield which reflected the magic missiles back to their source— "Sorcerers," she shook her head. "These are really simple spells. Nothing you should be afraid of, Valygar."

"I would still prefer not to have anything in common with it," the man, surrounded by the heaps of fallen arrows, replied, "Or, at least, to know what my own hand was doing."

Imoen looked at him for a moment, and sighed. "Don't we all—"

Then, deciding that, in the end, she owed no fealty to a goddess who, if one thought about it for a moment, must have known all along what was happening to Anomen Delryn, and still considered this man's continued survival more important than that one's—she said, "Look, Valygar. About Cerebus. He's a moon dog. Mielikki sent him to you, because she has destined you for some future greatness, and that's her way of getting to you." She considered her own words for a moment, and added, "I know it sounds stupid, but—"

She stopped: a grim, angry scowl crossed Valygar Corthala's face. "She has, hasn't she?" he asked heavily. "She will have to try harder, then."

---

Cernick was feeling better, and Imoen went a bit forward to see why the yuan-ti had not yet attacked them after the trap had fired.

The chamber behind the hidden door must have once been an old lumber-room, where broken weapons and unnecessary furniture was stored; there was even a horrible papier-mâché statue of an elephant standing in the corner, next to something which looked, for all the things in the world, like a forge without a place to light a fire— Imoen had not recalled her light to her, and her potion-induced infravision was useless in the case of inanimate objects; the illumination in the room was provided by the several skulls hovering at breast-height over the floor, with dark purple light streaming out of their eye-sockets.

"Can't go over them, can't go under them, can't go around them, unless you've one of them bendy bodies, like them snakes," Cernick said behind her, breathing warmth on her neck.

"Can't try to disarm them, either," Imoen nodded. "They explode on touch. What do you suggest?"

"Shoot them," Valygar said succinctly, eyeing Cernick's bow. "Trigger the trap. We know where to go next. We may get there."

"The corridor behind, the door on the right," the freckled mercenary nodded. "Straight to the main courtyard."

"Wait," Imoen grabbed Cernick's wrist. "Let me try something else first."

---

The red, acidic fumes of the death fog filled the small space of the lumber-room, eating slowly at everything present, including the skull-traps; in the dark corridor, Imoen was thinking with some small apprehension about the time, Valygar Corthala was inspecting his hand again, muttering without rancour about foul magic, and the mercenary Cernick was asking, "Hey. How did you know what poison this was that got me, miss?"

Imoen, for a moment disoriented, realised that the question was aimed at her. She frowned, trying to recall— It had felt natural, really; that slight tinge of adder's venom was instantly recognisable on the tongue — "I know my poisons, that's all," she smiled at the freckled hide.

"Oh," Cernick blinked. "Will you—"

"Where is your brother, Imoen?" Valygar interrupted suddenly, "Really?"

---

'_Where is Sarevok Anchev?' _It was frustrating how often she would have to answer this particular question in the weeks to come.

The unexpected return of the wayward scion of the d'Arnise line caused, understandably, a small sensation in the polite society of Athkatla. Nalia's old behaviour— Nalia's sudden disappearance— Nalia's long absence— Nalia's father— The assassination of Nalia's father, _such a pity, that was a calibre of a man, don't you think so, old sport?_— The assassination of Nalia's fiancé, _have you heard what that little man Brega dares insinuate, love?_— That obnoxious _halfling_ in Nalia's company— Nalia's new, perfectly delightful, although slightly eccentric—_observe the colour of her hair, dear!_—friend— _Where did she find such diamonds, how do you think, dear?_— _Would you believe, dear, I haven't the faintest idea. In the north, I suppose. What do you think of Delryn's claim?_

By the time Cor Delryn made his claim, the rumour mills had been working at full steam, fuelled to no small extent by Nalia, Imoen, and their greatest ally in the endeavour, Auntie Delcia; it was widely understood that Nalia d'Arnise, gamine and tomboy as ever, had, in the wake of her father's death, taken it to her head to lose her grief in a travel to the north, to Baldur's Gate, and beyond; that the halfling was her governess. That the duchess-claimant had met Imoen while returning from the barbaric lands; the charming _étranger_ was, in fact, the heiress to the barony of Windspear, an orphan given to raise to the monks of Candlekeep (and everyone knew what _that_ meant, of course—the question on everyone's minds, if not tongues, was _whose_ bastard Imoen was—)

Within these general airs, the petty noble's claim that the debutante was nothing but an impostor, and that the barony belonged rightfully to him, as his late son's entailed property—caused more than just a small commotion. It was fair to call it a small scandal; a small chaos, upheaval and pandemonium, even.

"Leaving no stone unturned, I see," Aran Linvail commented genially after they had been introduced to each other at a reception in the Pehllus Tanislove estate— "Don't worry about me, Imoen," he added calmly when she tried to assess how much he would harm her. "Worry about the paladins."

---

"Was _that_ Sir Ryan Trawl?"

Imoen thought she recognised that particular look on her friend's face. "He's twice your age and a widower, Nalia. And a paladin."

Nalia failed to relent; she grabbed the oaken post of the bed, twirled gracefully about it, and, propelled by the impetus, landed by Imoen on top of the bed-covers. "What was _he_ doing here?" she demanded further, with sheer innocuous curiosity.

"Oh, he's come to talk about my brother," Imoen answered lazily, not taking her eyes from over her diary.

That was not entirely true; Sir Ryan's first visit to the Hotel of The Seven Vales did not concern Sarevok Anchev. It concerned, instead, Anomen Delryn.

"The Prelate Wessalen was his relative on the mother's side," he explained, walking animatedly about the room, here and forth, his long black cape trailing behind him—almost twirling his non-existent moustache, Imoen, amused, thought—"When the Ilmatari said that it was a man and a woman who brought the body, and described the man, I thought—"

"The tale is certainly fascinating, Sir Ryan; and I do thank you for sharing it with me," Imoen said, smiling sweetly. "However, as I have already said, I have nothing to tell you. And now, excuse me, but I must ask you to leave. I am expecting guests. The Lady Maria Firecam, as you may already know. With daughters."

---

Vesper and Leona were sweet, like a Kythorn evening and the cub of a lioness; but Sir Ryan's second visit was infinitely more intriguing than the first one; or them.

By the time it came to pass, Cor Delryn had already cast a shadow on Imoen's character; worse still, in accordance with her darkest premonitions, a different tale had spread through Athkatla's underground. So far, its heroes were anonymous—Cousin Ano, most notoriously anonymous of all—and had reached few high-and-mighty ears; but it was only a matter of time before someone put together the horse and the cart.

What purpose Aran Linvail had in letting Jan Jansen talk, Imoen would not guess— Perhaps he merely couldn't stop him; certainly, when Sir Ryan returned, he had more than just air in his arrow-quiver.

"What is this story of a vampire and an oath… Lady Windspear?" he demanded as soon as he invaded her boudoir.

"How am I to know, Sir Ryan, what the servants gabble about?" she replied, without looking away from the window, still sipping the hot, spicy chocolate.

There was a sharp silence behind her. "I am a paladin of Torm, girl," she heard the man say, stringently, at the end of it, "My men are bound by an oath of secrecy, and I have sent the married of them out of Athkatla; but, if Cor Delryn demands it and I am called to the courts, I will testify."

The porcelain was slippery: covered with a thin layer of sweat turned frost where her fingers touched it. "That I am a Child of Bhaal?"

"That you are Sarevok Anchev's sister, and were in Windspear in his company," the man standing behind her back replied calmly. "And that Anomen Delryn perjured himself—"

The chocolate was distasteful; she put the cup away (a clink of chinaware on marble), and turned around (a rustle of the plain muslin dress); there were times when even a former thief must confront the enemy face-first.

He was older rather than younger without his helmet; grizzly-haired, hard-faced, scarred and cleanly-shaven, for he was paying a social call to a lady; and, full of only contempt for the man, she said, staring defiantly into the truth-seeing eyes, "Anomen Delryn did not perjure himself. He merely didn't know—"

She halted, then, seeing the man and his face— He was clear and transparent within, like a desert pond, like a desert's water; she could find nothing in him to use against him; losing the perfect moment of complete advantage, he let his battle-hardened features soften.

"Neither did I— The slaves did tell us who sent them," he said, almost gently; and, as she wondered, What slaves—?, added, "I did not want to believe them at first, even though I knew they believed they were telling the truth—" She remembered.

But they were not supposed to know, she protested first, feeling that she was whining; and then, quickly, considered: Aran must have been really keen on losing the trace— The man was looking at her expectantly; she was to give an answer.

"So what?" she asked; she had lost; she felt lost; she was lost. "What do you want? Why are you here? I—"

"What I am trying to prove to you, girl," the man replied, not unkindly, "is that I am bound to tell the truth, in court or otherwise; and that now, because of sheer ignorance, I am, as you were so quick to notice, condemned to say only to the truth which will harm you; and, of necessity, to draw my own conclusions, which may be a falsehood. Permit the observation, Lady Windspear, but you are not helping your own case."

Imoen felt herself begin to blush, like the small girl subject to another Winthrop's talking-to; purely to cover it, she frowned. "My case? I was not aware that I was under investigation."

The man sighed. "Not if you prefer to leave your reputation to the likes of Cor Delryn and bar moths—Lady Windspear—"

"Don't call me that name, Sir Ryan," she asked of him, suddenly, "The lands are still a matter of contention. And you were there."

"That is how I know that they never were an entailed Delryn property," the paladin replied easily. "May I sit?"

---

"Where is he now?" Sir Ryan asked when she finished relating her version of Jan's story to him, including all Sarevok's deductions regarding Anomen's last moves before his death; so far, he had failed to offer a single comment.

She frowned. "Anomen—? I thought his family— My brother." She picked up the chocolate, now completely cold, and drank a bit from it. "You don't need to concern yourself with him anymore, Sir Ryan. Sarevok left Amn."

"Where did he go?"

"I can't tell you," she said first, instinctively; but, of course, there was a reason for this, of all men's, insistence— "He will be dead soon, if he isn't already. You people can really stop chasing him. He's not a danger anymore." She considered this for a moment, and added, "In spite of that stupid oath."

The paladin appeared to consider this for a moment; then, he stirred, and said curtly, "There are other tales, Lady Windspear."

"What tales would that be?" she asked carefully.

"Of Trademeet," the man replied; as, relieved, she thought: not Aran Linvail's tales, then—he spoke on, "—and a druid village south of Trademeet. Furthermore, of Imnesvale. You may not have heard of it; it is a small hamlet in the Umar Hills— This one, most interestingly, perhaps, to one such as me, concerns the period after he escaped from the Trademeet city prison—"

She almost snorted when she felt his inquisitive gaze on her face; in her time with Sarevok, she had had more than her share of assessing looks. She knew how to hold them.

The paladin must understand this, because it was only after a brief moment that he finished his appraisal and his speech, noncommittally, "It appears that the man has been quite busy."

Imoen smiled.

"Look," she replied, "I'm extremely sorry to be so direct, Sir Ryan, but what do you actually want, again? Yes, my brother's gone and made himself a hero. Mostly by accident, against his better instincts, and protesting, kicking, yelling, and complaining, every bit like a child, and every single second of it. And during all that, I must have been completely invisible—"

The man actually smiled. "Not necessarily. More to the contrary, I daresay. The stories always speak of two names, Imoen of Candlekeep."

She refused to accept the first-name compliment. "All right. Then people like Mazzy must have been completely invisible—"

"It was Mazzy Fentan who approached me first, as soon as your party arrived in Athkatla."

Imoen shook her head. "No. It doesn't matter, you see? It doesn't even matter that he did that stunt where he helped us free the slaves and then escaped, so that all you would be left with is a good impression and no actual person to deal with—because, let me just tell you, he is still a pretty unpleasant person if you fall the wrong way with him, and you, Sir Ryan, you are just bound to fall the wrong way with him— It doesn't matter. Because he's gone. He's gone, and I— I have a—"

"—a reputation to sustain?"

She did not enjoy the way he had said that. "I was about to say, 'a life.' My father and my brother joined forces to destroy it. So, do excuse me, Sir Ryan, when I say that I am not overly interested in the posthumous rehabilitation of either."

The grizzly-haired knight was looking at her in silence; and, belatedly, she decided she might have been too strict with him.

"Look," she said. "I'll give you my diary. If you are still interested in weighing his heart against a feather, it should tell you everything you might wish to know— But he's dead, Sir Ryan. There's no reason for you to waste your time and resources going after him just so that you can check it for yourselves— I can understand why you want to try him. That's how things should be done. But Sarevok is dead," she repeated, desperate to convince. "He's already dead."

The man stood up from his chair. "It is the Order's duty to chase the outlaw until we catch him or prove his death," he said primly.

She did not follow suit. "Good luck on that with a Bhaalspawn," she said, instead. "We leave behind no trace."

"Apart from a story," Sir Ryan Trawl observed calmly. "We might help him. With Irenicus."

She looked up, startled, at the paladin's face—

"—And otherwise," Sir Ryan finished. "I am also oath-bound to seek out the truth of all things, Lady Windspear."

She stared at that living incarnation of her guilt and her pangs of conscience; at her own foolish words, turned against her—

"Hence, I fear," the man spoke, and she felt the full glare of his aura of command centre on herself, "I must ask you, again, this time_ ex officio_: Where is Sarevok Anchev?"

And replied, truthfully: "I told you, Sir Ryan. I don't know."

She did not, after all; she only knew whither her brother was gone; Nalia's Cowled Wizard contacts had told her all she had wanted to know about Spellhold, also known as their own former Asylum for Magical Deviants, on the isle of Brynnlaw.

Mustering all the coolness she could find in her heart and soul, she finished, "I am not—

---

—my brother's keeper, Valygar," she replied, frigidly, annoyed by how that old joke of theirs, Sarevok's and hers, was quickly taking a vicious turn. "Let's go get these snakes."


End file.
